


transactions

by wintersea (Afueras)



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Linktober, Linktober 2020, Memory Loss, One Shot Collection, Recovered Memories, Self-Doubt, Strangers, Travel, Worldbuilding, and of varying quality, really they're all different and nonlinear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 61,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26751493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/wintersea
Summary: series of daily unconnected BOTW one-shots, vaguely following the tumblr Linktober prompts.each has at least the vague semblance of a plot.[rapidly getting out of hand]
Comments: 86
Kudos: 86





	1. beast

The desert, or so the Gerudo say, stretches on forever to the west. To the south it must eventually meet the sea, but to the west it meets no end. But there is an end to where travellers can go, and those who have passed too far into the haunted waste do not return, or have not in the memories of the living. It is said in the Gerudo tongue - of particularly courageous and strong warriors - that these women "could travel the waste." And this was said of Lady Urbosa, when she was alive and long after. 

Riju tells Link this one evening as he greets her with an armload of molduga guts. Her own mother, apparently, was called the same - Waste-Traveller, She For Whom The World Would Have No End. 

"I can't live up to that," Riju tells Link one evening on the balcony of her room, when she'd waved and he'd climbed up to meet her, looking out over the town. "I know my people care for me. I hope they know I care for them. But if only I could do the things you do."

She means travelling land that should belong to the Gerudo, that does belong to the Gerudo, but which was stolen, like everything else from everyone, by the great Calamity. She also means the hunting of molduga, which has not been done in years and years. The Gerudo guard have been too few in number, too busy defending the city walls. Expeditions into the desert are rare.

The ancient methods of the molduga hunt are hardly forgotten. Captain Teake had told Link about them at length one day, when he brought another load of guts through the palace. Her own mother had done it, she said; the ideal group for a hunt was six fierce warriors, two of whom would alternate as runners and the other four of whom would attack the beast. The runners were revered perhaps even more than the fighters. They had to be swift, light of step, and filled with courage. Teake's mother was one of these. 

It was obvious to Link that there was respect in Teake's voice for the molduga themselves. Riju says as much, too, when Link asks her months later after making his rounds yet again.

"They aren't monsters of the Calamity. They have always been in the desert for at least as long as we have. Their territories are their own," she says, looking off through the window of the throne room as though she could see one. Link wonders briefly if she has. His confusion must show on his face when she turns back, because she laughs, albeit with an odd tone to her voice. 

"They're influenced by the Calamity now, of course. Same as anything else. That's partly why we don't hunt them anymore. There are too few of us, none of us have trained to fight them in too long now, and they're too dangerous. They don't breed anymore, only revive. We used to only hunt the adults as they got too big, too close. They were the dangerous ones. It used to be a festival, almost, when the hunts would come home. Something almost sacred. There were guts to make medicine, and there was balance. Any pair of Gerudo could take on a young molduga. If they needed to, anyway. But we don't see those young ones anymore. Maybe outside Hyrule, somewhere off in the desert. Not here."

Link studies the intestines, considering how many he'd brought back, always met with some kind of relief by the guards. 

"The guts you bring, they're being pickled," Riju says, failing to stifle a laugh. "The medics have them in jars. Saving them up. Less effective that way from what I understand, but better than none. They look awful."

Link shrugs. He hasn't seen the jars, but he can't imagine the guts look worse inside a jar than inside a molduga. Riju just cackles. 

A month later, after finally completing the Trial of the Sword, he returns to the desert. It's become a ritual: work on the next step on his quest, do shrines along the way, and return to the desert after a blood moon to hunt molduga. It's oddly therapeutic. There are various monsters all around Hyrule that he tries to defeat again after blood moons, but none so regularly. Most of them grow stronger and smarter. They seem to recognize him. They're located in the kinds of places he's just been, damp or cold or crawling with Malice. They take thought and tact to defeat, and he never gets around to all of them. If he did then he'd never get anything else done, and so he has to let most of them go. 

Molduga, though, stay the same. If there is any recognition in their large dark eyes, Link doesn't catch it. 

They're powerful beasts, and the job is strenuous. Less so with a good weapon or elemental arrows, but Link treasures those, and so he tackles molduga with brute force almost every time. It's mind-numbing and tiring. Exactly what he wants. 

Run from one elevated rock to another or throw a bomb to bring the beast closer, detonate in its mouth if he's lucky. Once it's stunned, rush to attack. Retreat when it begins to move. Repeat. 

When he's very lucky, Link can knock them all out in just over a day, especially if he has a sand seal from Frelly that will wait for him and ferry him between. Drop off the entrails at Gerudo Town, restock arrows if needed, relax for a couple of hours, and get back on the road. It's mindless, it's routine, and it's gratifying in a way that most monster-killing isn't. 

After the conversation with Riju, though, Link finds himself hesitating.

He perches atop the edge of the Southern Oasis, staring down at the shifting of the sand as the creature passes below on it's winding route. 

Pulling an apple from his slate, he tosses it experimentally onto the sand, just to watch the creature snatch it up. Its body, sleek and dark and massive, leaves the earth effortlessly and plummets gracefully back down to burrow through. With the sun and the wind, Link didn't get a good look into it's eye. He wonders if it remembers him. He wonders what a young one would look like. The size of a sand seal? A Hylian? A dog? 

Link squints up at the sun. It's late afternoon; he got here later than usual, delayed by Yiga. His back aches. Despite coming out of the Trial of the Sword healed and well, he can't remember the last time he slept. The itch to fight something and rest his mind at the same time is still present, but it's duller. He's tired. 

The Gerudo are pickling the molduga guts in jars, he remembers. For when he's gone, maybe. For when he goes to the castle and doesn't come back. Because the molduga are too much of a risk to be worth hunting anymore. 

Link doesn't kill the molduga. 

Instead it's a glide out of the beast's territory and then a long walk back to the town, pulling on Bozai's sand boots to outrun stal-monsters as the sun sets. 

Then it's straight to the inn, ignoring absolutely everyone, climbing over the city walls while still yanking the veil over his head. 

Then, it's a long night's sleep in an actual bed. Link doesn't dream of anything. 

"Hey."

Link turns, only half conscious. Throws a hand over his eyes to block the onslaught of light. 

"Hey!"

The face looming over him belongs to Barta, Link realizes belatedly with an eightfold blade already at her throat. She just laughs. 

Link tries to look apologetic, but quickly gives up. 

"Just checking on you, you know. No need to be cranky. We were worried; Teake's having a crisis. It's my day off, but when we heard you were in town and hadn't seen you come with molduga parts she thought you'd gotten eaten, I know she did. I had to go tell her myself that if you'd been eaten by a molduga, you'd be somewhere far worse than this inn." Barta pauses. "I don't think she appreciated the reassurance."

Link blinks at her, letting the words sink in. He stretches like a cat, relishing the popping of his spine. The ache is gone. 

Barta's still talking, something about Teake's cousin owning this place and something else about Teake's excellent wrestling form, when Link waves a hand to interrupt her. She blinks back at him. 

"Going today," he manages, sitting in silence for a moment to find more words. 

"Want to come?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had absolutely zero intention of doing anything related to Linktober until 7am today when I woke up, Irrationally Decided, looked up the prompts for ideas, and then proceeded to smash this out for day 1 ("monster/beast" being the prompt), all before 10am. unsure of how i'm going to keep up with it on time but we'll see. currently aiming for 1k words per day, minimum 700, as i've done that successfully before. wish me luck please with the worst spontaneous idea i've ever had


	2. princess

Link does not remember Mipha. Even after gaining that one memory of her, and others with her in them, he doesn't remember her. Not really. Not enough. 

Link must have known her well, and even been very close to her, or so everyone tells him. He must have known things about her beyond a voice and a name and a face, and a few lines she said to him once, that feel - like the rest of his memories - more like a dream than a recollection. 

Really, it was someone else who knew Mipha. Link doesn't. He knows the shape of her ghost, the touch of her power. But he doesn't know her. It would be disrespectful, he thinks, to claim that he knows her. 

But it seems disrespectful in a different way to speak of not knowing her, not remembering her or any of her people. It's uncomfortable, being in Zora's Domain and constantly feeling the weight of eyes that recognize him. Even if they know he doesn't remember. 

There's no urgent need to be in the Domain, not after the cleansing of Vah Ruta, which has been over with for several months. Link went on immediately to free Vah Medoh, and then Vah Rudania. All that's left is Naboris. He knows he should get on with it, but there are endless tasks to do elsewhere and loose ends to tie up, little quests that have brought him back to Rito Village and Goron City again and again, but never to the Domain.

Last week Link got a good picture of a Lynel, a snarling silver one. It reminded him of Laflat and made him worry about the Lynel on Ploymus Mountain, which he'd gone back to kill a couple of times, but of course wouldn't stay dead. Hopefully Laflat's fears for the Zora youth are unfounded, and no one has climbed the mountain. But once Link starts thinking about it he can't stop; he never gave her that picture, even though he hadn't exactly promised to, and he hadn't ever brought frogs to Tumbo, as he hadn't had any on him at the time. He found Fronk's wife at Lake Hylia, but never found out if she got back safely, or at all. 

Painful as it is, Link can't avoid the Domain forever. Not in good conscience. 

Sitting on the slippery cliffs up by Vah Ruta is a good start, watching the workings of the Domain below. He isn't sure if Mipha's spirit is here, or elsewhere, or whether it exists at all aside from being summoned when he's terribly injured, but even that could be a hallucination. It's almost easier to believe that Ruta itself is a sentient spirit standing beside him than Mipha. 

He doesn't know her, Link reminds himself. He couldn't know her. Can't. But the little figures moving about the Domain below knew her, and continue to in ways that he likely never will. She was their princess; surely even those Zora who never interacted with her remember her better than Link does. 

Link imagines that her people would've known her well; from the way they speak of her, it seems she was known and loved by even those who, in Hylian society, perhaps would've had no access to or relationship with royals. Link can only judge by his own sparse memories of the Hylian royal family, but he can't imagine the King of Hyrule conversing openly with his people the way King Dorephan seems to. 

Zelda is different, Link thinks. He doesn't know her either, but he doesn't think she wanted to be a princess. Maybe she did, but not in the way her father demanded. It's hard to get a clear picture of what she would want to be. 

But then, Mipha might've secretly not wanted to be a princess either, and Link will never get to know. No one will.

When he finally glides down to it, Zora's Domain as quiet as it always is at night. Tonight more than ever, though, the stillness is broken only by the ever-moving water that runs across smooth stone. The Zora Prince is in what Link assumes might be his usual place, at least for several hours after sundown. Part of Link wants to speak to him; he has no real reason not to, as Mipha's brother - and father, for that matter - have been nothing but kind to him, but he can't make himself do it. Not when he can't possibly share the same grief. Not when his presence and lack of memory could only serve to worsen it. 

Instead he waits on one of the spiraling pathways, letting the cool water run over and into his boots until his feet are thoroughly soaked, staring up through the darkness toward the falls that Mipha's armor allows him to ascend. 

Mipha was a good person. Mipha continues to be a good person, even in death, even if her people do not know it, and even if Link does not know her. Link can believe that, knowing her or not. He's seen enough to know that. 

Was she happy? Did she love her position? Surely she loved her people, or she wouldn't have become a Champion. Zelda seemed to have been forced into her role, but nothing indicates that Mipha was forced into hers. 

Prince Sidon finally wanders away, right when Link's feet have gone numb. No one is around the statue. If Link wants to go look at it alone, now is the time. The paraglider unfurls slowly in his hands. 

Even from up here, though, leaning over the railing, her statue glows in a way that even the goddess statues don't. Link's memory of her seems dull and flat in comparison. 

He doesn't glide down to it. 

Instead he takes the long way, trudging down the winding ramps, careful not to slip. He pauses at the bottom, only for a moment, the glow of Mipha's statue in the corner of his eye. 

It's wrong, he decides. It's the wrong color. Her spirit, when it appears in the corner of his fading vision sometimes, lighting up the darkness, is tinged more green. It's brighter, even in the day. More alive. 

The inn is open, even though Kodah is asleep when he enters. Link nearly leaves so as not to wake her, but she wakes on her own and greets him blearily with a crushing hug. She's warm, for a Zora. Or maybe Link is too cold. 

She knew Mipha, he thinks. Kodah knew Mipha when she was a princess, when she was alive, when she knew Link. 

He almost asks her about it. He wonders if it would cause her pain to talk about. 

But Kodah is busy offering him a steep discount, asking if he's seen Bazz, asking where he's been, guiding him to a bed, and he remembers his numb feet and the way Ruta felt alive beside him, the way he knows the color and shape of Mipha's spirit, and decides against it. 

Link likes Mipha, he thinks. She's a good person. She was kind like Kodah though maybe quieter, and she healed his wounds when he knew her and continues even now that he doesn't, and he trusts her with his life endlessly.

Link hopes she trusts him too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vaguely off the prompt "princess"


	3. time

Inside the Sheikah shrines, time tends to seem slippery and vague. Link knows that time must pass the same inside them as it does outside, at least according to the Slate, but that doesn’t change the odd sensation of entering a place and spending what feels like an hour but turns out to be two days. 

There is nothing at all to indicate the passage of time in the shrines. Even Link’s own body betrays him in that regard, never getting noticeably tired or hungry -- at least no more than when he entered, and he usually exits feeling better anyway after the monk’s blessing. The lighting is always the same consistent glow; the noises are mechanical and echoing, no wind or birdsong. Everything is still.

Morbidly, Link tends to consider the shrines as a kind of burial chamber. After all, each has a corpse inside it, and the chambers are so far beneath the earth that the first few life rides gave him intense claustrophobia. 

He wonders if it’s the same feeling as the Shrine of Resurrection must have had for the hundred years he spent in it: lifeless, ageless, and empty, unchanging and spectral. That shrine had its own corpse too. 

The first time he visited Kakariko it was particularly striking -- traipsing through the village at five in the morning without a word to anybody, bedraggled and determinedly avoiding all the open stares, following the beeping sensor of the slate up the hill and out of the village to the shrine, only to leave it half an hour later and find that he’d been inside for a full day, much to the shock of a flabbergasted Sheikah guard who had come to investigate -- all because Link hadn’t understood yet that the shrine didn’t have to be completed for the warp point to be activated. Impa hadn’t been particularly pleased. 

Now, almost a year later, the denizens of the Dueling Peaks stable are well-accustomed to Link appearing from the direction of the shrine at odd hours. They don’t even turn from their business anymore, knowing that he’ll just head straight to the cooking pot to make some horrible-smelling elixir, take out a horse, maybe talk to either Beedle or Hino, and then disappear in one direction or another, not to be seen for another month. 

What they aren’t accustomed to is seeing Link inside the stable, at least not since his first memorable visit. So when he comes through the door late one evening, every single head turns. 

Beedle, from the spot he seems to have just claimed on the floor, waves and calls an ecstatic greeting. Everyone else just stares. 

Link waves back at Beedle and ignores the rest in favor of heading to the counter, where Tasseren greets him with wide eyes and then just stands there looking nervous. Link stares back at him. 

"Do you… want a bed? We have two kinds, regular and-" 

Link nods.

"Twenty rupees," Tasseren says, still appearing to be in a stupor.

Link pays him, swivels and makes for the nearest unoccupied bed, pulling the curtains sharply around it and then face planting into the blankets. There's still silence in the stable. 

That last shrine, the one deep in Faron where he'd heard Kass playing and then nearly gotten electrocuted trying to unearth, rattled him. Not that part, which had really been just as funny as it was miserable, but what occurred after. 

He'd left it hoping to find Kass still there, but of course the usual hour had already passed and the Rito was long gone. The shrine had just been a blessing, but maybe Link had been moving particularly slowly out of exhaustion, and he certainly had stopped just outside of the elevator to down an elixir. Maybe the monk spoke even more slowly than usual. Whatever it was, Kass was gone along with the lightning storm, though the weather was still miserable. After an hour or so of combing the area for monsters and supplies Link found himself heading back to the shrine to get some rest away from the stal-monsters and other creatures of the night. 

Since he'd woken, the shrines had been a good place to sleep. Not every night, as he often travelled on through the darkness, but whenever he needed real sleep, the kind that a brief nap in a tree or meditative trance by a fire wouldn't provide. 

Inns always felt awkward. Maybe Link spent too much time alone on the Plateau relearning how to be a Hylian, and avoided settlements for too long in favor of the wild. But the spaces feel stifling, and the idea of sleeping so close to strangers is difficult. Even on that first day in Kakariko, after he was done with Impa and everything else and was read to collapse from sheer exhaustion, Link had traipsed back up into the hills to sleep at the entrance to the shrine. 

Once the monk disappears, Link has never been too bothered by spending time in the shrines. The tomb is emptied, the spirit freed. After the puzzle or challenge is done, most of them are just vast quiet spaces, echoing and empty. It's a good safe place for a rest, even if it's vaguely sad. 

The things Link usually ignores, though, are the parallels to the Shrine of Resurrection, and there are plenty. The glow, the silence, the body inside. The way time seems to shudder and change and bend. 

So a week ago when he woke in that shrine in Faron expecting it to be morning only to find that it had been three days, three days of deep unbroken sleep - for which time seemed to stand still, as his body could never sleep for so long naturally, usually waking after five or six hours at the most - something about it shook Link to the core. 

The past week has been a nightmare of trying to do double-time, trying to compensate for the time lost and cover as much ground as he possibly can. 

All of that leads to where he is now, facedown on a stable bed. 

It's softer than Link remembers, though he's only slept on one once, at the Snowfield Stable when his horse got hurt by a Lizalfo in a blizzard, when visibility was low and the only option had been to wait it out. The stable was deserted, and Link still barely got any sleep. 

Here though, the voices outside the curtain slowly resume quiet conversation, and instead of nerve-racking it's oddly comforting. Particularly in comparison to the silence of the shrines. The noise is a marker of minutes passing without even having to look at the slate; the people here are living and real. Link's muscles relax before he even notices it. And even if he doesn't sleep terribly well with the noise and the light filtering through, and the smells of food and humans, and the thought of them laughing at him out there, time still moves at a reasonable pace, making it restful in its own way. 

When Tasseren comes to wake him in the morning Link's already pulling his boots on. The morning is clear and bright, the field crisp with dew, his horse restless and waiting. 

It's only been one night here. There are endless others. Zelda is waiting, and there's still time. 


	4. place

Arriving in Lurelin is a huge relief. Link doesn’t know if he’s ever felt more relieved in his life than he does now, emerging from those hellish woods to a village of little huts and cheery villagers and a calm sea, sunset turning the water a thousand different colors he doesn’t know names for. There are children, and dogs, and wonderful food-smells wafting through the evening air. 

Link’s just grateful to have made it out of the woods before nightfall, unsure of how he would’ve even survived another night in there. His limbs are still twitching from shock arrows. The endless rain has managed to soak even through his supposedly-waterproof Sheikah clothes, even if just from his multiple dunks in the river and subsequent electrocutions. Mipha’s seen him twice in as many days. The second time, exasperation was visible breaking through the concerned fondness in her eyes. 

Link doesn’t mean to be reckless. He really doesn’t. He’s just so tired he can hardly see straight, but  _ refuses _ to turn back before activating some kind of warp point. He  _ refuses  _ to make that kind of trek again. For a while he’d wished he’d brought Ruby with him regardless of the uncleared paths and the obstacles and the enemies, because surely riding would’ve halved that journey. She’s proven she can outrun Lizalfos and arrows, and even rugged forest floors aren’t much of an obstacle to her. 

But in another way he’s glad he didn’t, because there was no way the two of them could’ve avoided it all. She would’ve gotten hurt, and there appears to be no stable here where she could heal. It’s a good thing Link came on foot, miserable as he is about it. 

The first order of business is to find a shrine - no settlement yet has been far from one, and the Slate’s sensor has given a few halfhearted beeps. It’s when he realizes the direction of the beeps that he stops dead: wherever the shrine is, it appears to be up some steep cliffs, still wet with rain. 

Link sits down on the wet ground. 

The villagers probably won’t like a muddy half-dead stranger stumbling around looking for a place to sleep. They haven’t noticed him yet. It’s probably a good thing. 

Several fishing boats are coming in, down at the water. He watches the fishermen leap out and wade the rest of the way, other villagers appearing to help tow the boats by ropes, pulling them onto the sand. Children scurry over with hyper greetings. Link can hear them from here, but can’t make out any words. 

He’ll get up in a minute, Link tells himself. He’ll sit here until the ground has dried a little. It shouldn’t be too long. He’s got to climb up and seek out the shrine, probably go ahead and complete the trial. He just needs one more spirit orb for the goddess to do her strange work. It might as well be this one. Regardless, he has to get that warp point activated. Those woods are  _ not _ somewhere he wants to be again anytime soon without a waypoint beyond them. 

Something wet nudges against his hand. 

Link whips his head around, only to find a dog sitting politely behind his left shoulder, tongue lolling. It looks friendly enough. Still he curses himself for his own unawareness, something unusual these days. He’s too tired. Has to find that shrine. 

Giving the dog a pat, Link heaves himself to his feet, leaning heavily on a Lizal spear. A sharp ache travels down his left leg. A wound there that stretches nearly from hip to knee is still bleeding sluggishly. A Lizalfo had been too quick, its boomerang wickedly sharp, and Link had slipped on the wet ground and been unable to leap back in time to avoid the downward slash. It hadn’t hurt. He’d thought that shitty elixir he downed on the final stretch had healed it, but apparently not. 

Limping down the path with the dog in tow, Link grits his teeth. If he can finish the challenge in that shrine he can sleep there, and not terrorize the villagers until he’s had a chance to clean up. They aren’t going to be used to his particular brand of strangeness like the Hateno villagers are. No need to cause any unnecessary alarm. 

But after only a few dozen feet it’s apparent Link won’t be able to complete the shrine. The polished stone floors in there won’t get traction with the end of a spear. He knows that from experience. There’s no way he can walk unaided. Whatever’s in there will have to wait until he’s had a chance to heal, though he still has to activate it. 

Thankfully, climbing is still in the realm of possibility. The cliffs are wet and slick with few handholds, but Link’s dealt with that before. His fingers still twitch with the remnants of electricity, but his grip is nearly as strong as ever. 

He doesn’t make it up the cliff. 

Less than ten feet up he slips, and maybe he could’ve caught himself but his brain is too slow, and before he even realizes he’s let go he hits the ground hard with a crunch. Ten feet is still definitely enough to hurt. 

Dazed, Link stares up at the darkening sky. At least until the dog’s slobbering face blocks out his vision. 

It barks. It’s loud. Link covers his ears. 

“Why, who’s this?” a woman’s voice asks, caught somewhere between worry and amusement. Link wishes desperately that it were Mipha. 

“Did you come through the woods?” she asks, warm and seemingly not too bothered by Link’s current state. “I heard Fin bark but almost couldn’t find you. He’s our official greeter. The path doesn’t lead up those cliffs, you know.”

Link doesn’t answer, busy keeping his eyes shut and hoping he dies. The woman sighs, but there’s no unkindness in it. 

“Do you need help up?”

Link shakes his head, mentally thanking the darkness. 

“Well, I’ll be down there, come down when you’re ready. Whatever business you’ve got up there can wait. The Village isn’t much, but we like visitors.” She pauses for a minute, saying nothing else, so Link gives a thumbs-up as best he can manage. She laughs, and he hears her footsteps travelling away, light against the grass. There’s silence for a moment.

The dog whines. 

_ Couldn’t she have taken you with her?  _ Link thinks, but relents and pets it again, before using its shoulder to help prop himself up into a sitting position. All the blood leaves his head at once and he sways, leaning against the dog. It sits patiently and pants in his ear. 

Lurelin is lit at night with dozens of little lanterns and cooking fires, glowing warm against the cool night air. The glow catches on rough wood and worn fabric and reflects off the sea itself, splintering into an orange halo out across the water. The waves are calm; the horizon is invisible in the dark, as though the whole ocean is nothing more than a pool of warm light and shadow, slow-moving and tranquil. 

The slate’s inventory is a horrible mess, as always, everything completely unorganized. Link swipes through it, looking for any healing items he might’ve missed earlier in his rush. There’s a half-drunk fairy tonic right there between a handful of stealth elixirs. Link stares at it for a moment, sighs, retrieves and downs it. 

The dog sticks its nose in Link’s ear. He lets it. It deserves it, for being a good backrest, even if Link’s still a little annoyed by the barking. The villager was nice though, and left him alone, and wasn’t unkind about it. The weather is balmy, the beach seems safe and calm, and Link thinks he can see palm fruits up in the trees. The little floating market looks well-stocked with something or other, from what he can tell from this distance. The urgency of getting up to the shrine has dulled a little. It feels almost silly now, the thought of striving to get there so desperately. It’ll be there tomorrow, and so far the Hylian settlements have been largely safe, even at night. Nothing’s going to kill him before tomorrow. 

Watching one of the village kids try to set fire to a palm leaf, a passing adult merely dumping his mug of water over it and carrying on, Link thinks maybe they could get used to his chaos here too, just as in Hateno. Maybe even better. He could certainly get used to this calm. 

Faron is terrible, Link doesn’t like water, the location of this shrine is going to be a nightmare, and there’s no stable. But at the moment those things don’t particularly seem to matter. His relief over making it here is back in full force, the dog is warm at his back, the fairy tonic is slowly doing its work, and Link is content. The night is a beautiful one. For the moment, he thinks this might be his favorite place yet in all of Hyrule. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lurelin probably isn't my favorite place in the botw map, but I went with it bc want some variety in the settings of these.  
> also, please bear with me - I've only got about an hour a day max at the moment to get these one shots done, so there isn't much time for the kind of fact/map/dialogue checking I'd want to do for any longer works, & I do apologize for random inaccuracies.


	5. flora

When the old man on the Plateau scolded Link about taking his baked apple, Link learned that the word apple referred to that red fruit, the same fruit he’d snatched from a tree only minutes before, raw and glistening and warm from the sun. 

A few days later, Link learned that the items in his slate had labels, written in both common Hylian and ancient Sheikah. He understood the Hylian, sort of. Enough to usually make out what something is called after he’d already collected it. Usually after he’d already eaten it, or unsuccessfully tried to. It was helpful. Not life-changing, but helpful enough. The Slate only seemed to accept items it recognized, and then he’d have to scan them in to read the label, then take them back out again to use them. During his time on the Plateau Link spent hours sometimes just doing that, struggling to read slowly through the labels when the letters and symbols tended to blur together. He must’ve known how to read, before, but maybe he wasn’t ever good at it. Or he’d just forgotten. 

It wasn’t easy, but it got easier with time. 

He still doesn’t know the words for a lot of things. Maybe the dead king realized that, and that’s why he talked so much. Link knew innately what grass was, right out of the Shrine, but he didn’t know the word “grass.” He only had a vague idea of what things were fine to eat and what things weren’t. He thought of all animals, for a time, as “raw meat” and “bird leg” and “chickaloo nut,” or whatever the Slate told him came from them. Even realizing later the morbidity of that habit, he still categorizes animals that way. At the Dueling Peaks stable he’d looked for a particularly long time at a dog before deciding it would likely be “raw meat,” like foxes and goats and boars, even though the thought of actually eating it never crossed his mind. 

It wasn’t that way with everything. Some things he could sort of remember if he looked at them long enough -- the word “hands” was on the tip of his tongue for weeks -- but usually it took some other prompting for the words to come back, like learning the word “stone” and realizing that’s what cliffs are made of, and that they’re called “cliffs,” and that there’s also the word “rock” -- a lot of things come back when one word does, and every time it feels like a little blessing, like it’s filling in yet another tiny tiny part of the gaping hole inside his head that aches sometimes with the emptiness. 

Kakariko taught him plenty of new words. Impa used a lot of them, and the villagers even more. Sometimes he finds it hard to even focus on what they’re saying because  _ armor, this stuff is called armor, and that’s a bracer and these are belts, and why didn’t that come back with the word “clothes? They aren’t so different, I just hadn’t seen them, why do I have to see them to remember? Why did words like “fabric” and “leather” and “shoes” all come back but not “armor?” Why is it so complicated? _

When Impa tells Link to go to Hateno, that name doesn’t ring a bell at all, and he isn’t surprised. Places usually don’t. Something like “mountain” does, but “Dueling Peaks” doesn’t. Maybe the land of Hyrule is completely erased from his head, even if the concept of land itself has sort of stayed.

Regardless, Link gets on his way after going back to the stables and learning how to catch a horse, which his body actually remembers how to ride in the way it remembers fighting and sitting and tying back his hair. The horse is a gentle spotted mare that’s slow and older but doesn’t seem to mind him too much, and he names her Banana, because he just remembered that word after his Yiga fight on the way to Kakariko, and those new fruits have spots too, and he can’t come up with words for anything else that does. 

Purah scares Link a little, but not enough to refuse her upgrades to the Slate, even when it means a trek with the blue flame and the possibility of having to scavenge through that field of dead Guardians. The Slate is valuable, has given him back a lot of words and the potential for memories of his life. The Slate holds whatever’s left of who Link once was and is supposed to be. The Slate is immeasurably important. 

The Camera Rune itself is enough to be excited about, when it’s a tangible thing to look at, when it means the Slate has held onto those images for a hundred long years when Link couldn’t, and it could possibly give them back in some way. That’s valuable. 

But the Compendium becomes equally valuable in a way Link doesn’t expect.

_ Sunshrooms _ , Symin calls them, and it sounds like as good a name as any for the little round orange things that he knew were called “mushrooms” but still couldn’t remember specifics about. Link stares at them for a while where they’re growing behind the lab. 

He takes the Slate out and points the camera at them, ready to take the picture, then stops. 

_ Sunshroom,  _ the screen says. Simple as that. 

He takes the picture.

It takes a minute to find the Compendium in the Slate, even though Purah had shown him where it is. Once Link finds it, though, it’s not hard to find the sunshroom, being the only little picture filled in out of dozens of empty spaces. 

_ A bright red mushroom that grows in hot climates. Imbued with the power of heat, they can… _

Huh. Link looks back at the sunshroom, where it glistens in the sun, untouched. He wonders. 

Down at Hateno Beach, Link only feels a little guilty about deserting Symin. He’ll get back to him with that picture soon enough, he’s sure. First, though, there’s experimentation to be done. 

It’s killing two birds with one stone, anyway; that lady had said something about monsters down here needing to be eliminated, and Link can test his theory. 

Carefully, not letting himself get excited over nothing, Link pulls out the Slate and aims it at the monsters below. They haven’t spotted him yet, on his perch on the rocks. He’s almost too far away, but leaning out makes it work: he takes a picture -- a terrible one, but a picture nonetheless -- of a stray bokoblin. 

There it is in the Compendium, right in the section where it’d looked like monsters would go, complete with name and description. There’s a section for what looks like animals, weapons… this changes things. This is new. 

Link considers those horrible rock monsters. It would've been nice to know something about those before diving into the fight. It'll certainly be nice now to find out what they're called. 

It also certainly would've been nice to know more about horses beyond the vague mental category of "probably prime meat." Link thinks about Banana, where he left her by the inn in Hateno. It's only been a week since he remembered horses. If he could've just pointed the Slate at one sooner and been given a name and a description, things might've gone differently. And there are probably endless other creatures Link hasn't even met or heard of yet. 

This is a  _ big _ change. 

Wiping out the monster camp feels even easier than usual, despite the fact that Link breaks four weapons doing it. He faithfully takes pictures of every weapon the monsters drop before he even scans them into his inventory. Back in Hateno he reads through all the descriptions one by one, after spreading out everything in the Slate to photograph too, even the things he feels like he already remembers just fine. He photographs Banana too, and a dog, and the thing the Slate calls a Hateno Cow. 

Even after that Link already itches to just go take more pictures. He still has to go see Impa to discuss the pictures the Princess left, and that's very important too, but surely it isn't as immediately life-changing as the Compendium. 

Looking at that first picture, the blurry one of the sunshroom that he still needs to go show Symin, Link feels something like contentment. Maybe even pride. This is a way that he can get something back, learn new things, become better, more prepared. 

The plants section of the Compendium alone seems massive. Link's lack of knowledge feels almost satisfying now instead of nerve-racking to think about. It can be another challenge, almost a game, like with the Koroks. 

Take pictures. Get information. Get words back. It feels like he's putting himself back together. He has a guide now to slowly fill some of that emptiness in his head. 

The Compendium is  _ very  _ important. And for the next few months of travel, whenever he sees a sunshroom, everywhere from Rito Village to Eldin to Gerudo, it's a reminder of that. It's calming. Settling. There are always slots to fill with pictures, less empty ones by the day, but sunshrooms were the first. It's six months before he remembers to show Symin that picture, and Link doesn't even feel too bad about it. 

It's a precious, important thing.


	6. shop

The Lost Woods are suffocating. The Korok Forest is somehow worse than the eerie maze of trees beyond. Maybe it’s the empty space where the Sword rested before Link pulled it, where its imposing presence still seems to linger, or maybe it’s the silent judgment constantly emanating from the Deku Tree, be it real or imagined. But something here is suffocating and makes Link’s chest tighten.

The place should be peaceful. Light filters down through the endless shifting leaves, casting rays of silver and gold all around the forest floor regardless of the hour; there are no monsters, no enemies, nothing to fight. It is a place of safety and calm. Gnarled roots crawl across the ground carpeted by soft leaves, and the ancient trees, though broad and twisted and strange, seem to have consciousness. Maybe they were once Koroks. Maybe the Deku Tree can speak to them. Maybe every tree in these woods can speak, and see, and they are all always watching and saying nothing to Link. That’s what the feeling is like. 

The Koroks, at least, breathe life into the semi-stillness. They’re a source of constant movement and noise, albeit airy and gentle. They peek out from everywhere, scurry across the ground, play across the roots and up in the tree branches. They chatter like squirrels and peep like birds. They’ve become increasingly less afraid of Link, going so far as to run across his feet sometimes or whack their stubby little arms into his legs, wanting to be picked up. They talk and talk, sometimes in a sort of tongue Link can’t understand. They always talk about how they believe in him. They always call him Mr. Hero, even when he feels like he absolutely and completely isn’t a hero at all and couldn’t possibly be mistaken for one. 

The energy of the Koroks is restful, even if that makes no sense. Link could never sleep here otherwise. Not with the Deku Tree presiding over. Not with all the trees’ odd sentience and the Master Sword’s empty space reminding Linkof its presence in the Slate’s inventory, never on his back but silently demanding to be. It’s too heavy somehow, in the same way that the air of the Korok Forest can be when it’s not filled with flying stubby little creatures all toppling over each other and demanding to help, to cheer Link up, to hear stories and tell stories. 

Link mainly visits to see Hestu, and occasionally just to be around the Koroks for a day and get some rest in a safe place, oppressive as it feels. He doesn’t come too often, and he never stays long. 

Even so, he always enters the base of the Deku Tree, skulking into that hollowed-out sanctuary that it’s creepy to think for too long about. He sleeps there once in a while, usually for a few hours, so Pepp won’t think his efforts in building a comfortable sleeping-place and waiting ages and ages for someone to use it have been a waste. Link appreciates it, he really does. It’s a form of kindness rare in Hyrule, even if no one can ever be blamed for it. Link feels bad even taking Kapson up on his constant offer of a free night’s sleep in an indoor bed. Link just doesn’t need it; he usually sleeps a bit better outdoors, and beds can be a rare commodity on the road. Someone else could use it more, and by this point Link has plenty of money. 

Besides the occasional rest, Link mostly comes in here to visit and spend a tiny portion of his money at the little shops the Koroks have set up, the ones they’ve stocked especially for him with things they’ve thought he might need. They’re fairly dead-on, too; he can always use arrows from Daz at least, and Natie’s mushrooms are the perfect thing to throw in the cooking pot the Koroks provided, to show he’s grateful, to show he appreciates their efforts to help. 

Sitting there right on the floor with warm food and half a dozen cheerful Koroks, regardless of the hour, regardless of where he’s at in his quest or whether he reasonably had the time to come here, it’s hard to feel too guilty about anything. It’s hard to be particularly sad. 

It isn’t about the supplies; Link gets most of what he needs from enemies and from the wilds, and there are numerous merchants everywhere trying to sell him things -- Beedle most prominently, but Link likes to think they have something approaching a friendship, and Beedle isn’t too unlike a cheerful Korok even when he’s trying to extort a handful of rupees out of Link for a bug he could find ten of anywhere -- and the settlements, Hylian and otherwise, all of them have their own merchants and specialized, well-stocked shops and unique goods, all of them have real economies to sustain, and Link buys from them too sometimes. 

He comes here for the fact that it’s essentially a dozen devoted friends who made him an inn and a shop so that he’d have everything he needs here, with no strings attached and no pressure. They even let him sell things to him too, probably giving him his own rupees right back from wherever they stash them. It’s almost like a game, except that it isn’t really. They’re doing their best and want Link to be genuinely happy. It’d be overwhelming if everything else weren’t already overwhelming. In the end it’s just endearing and comfortable. 

Pepp sits right in Link’s lap, unbothered by Link’s abysmal table manners or possible stench, chattering about Blupees again, and it’s just comfortable. It’s night outside and suffocating in the woods, but it’s safe right here. Link already napped in the bed and plans to leave long before morning, but it doesn’t matter. Dak is asleep in a pile of rice and Natie is propped against a large mushroom, listening to Pepp and occasionally offering a sleepy argument. Pepp, gesticulating wildly with a stick in his hand, keeps accidentally yanking Link’s unbound hair. 

Thinking vaguely of going tomorrow to the desert for bomb and ice and fire arrows, conveniently stocking up on all of them in one trip, Link figures he still really doesn’t regret coming here first. The Gerudo merchants may be largely very nice and even fond of him and all his rupees and gemstones, but the Gerudo market just isn’t quite like this. It's not a shop just for him, full of one of the best kinds of company. 

Link doesn't really know Zelda, but she's been here before and so could probably come again, and he thinks she'd like it too. 


	7. ride

Storm clouds lay low in the sky, heavy and dark and blotting out the midday sun, threatening rain over the hills. Thunder has sounded in the distance more than once. Link can feel it through the ground, deep vibrations travelling up through Ruby’s sturdy back and into the set of his hips. He can almost taste lightning in the air. 

He’s already rid himself of metal weapons and armor as a precaution, but still doesn’t want to be caught in the storm. The Outskirt Stable is too far behind him now to be worth retreating to, or so he tells himself. This isn’t a trip Link particularly wants to try and make again. 

The glow over this mountain is one he’s seen plenty of times from a distance, but never up close. He’s always been too far away to catch it in time. There’s always been something to do that’s far more important than chasing strange greenish glows across Hyrule and up strange mountains. 

It’s been bothering him, though, that he hasn’t been up there. Maybe there’s a shrine, or something else of strange interest. There has to be  _ something.  _ That glow is reminiscent of the color of spirits, at least the ones he’s met. No one else seems to acknowledge it or speak of it at all, so maybe they can’t see it, same as dragons and Koroks and spirits of the dead. The glow is too strong, too strange, and too interesting to ignore. He has to find out. 

Link’s cleared a whole week for this expedition, having scoped out the Yiga Hideout and resolved to take more time to plan before rushing in for the Thunder Helm. This little trip is an excellent time to strategize for that, and to satiate his curiosity at the same time. He warped to the Outskirt Stable two days ago, bringing some gourmet meat to Trott and selling what Trott won’t buy to Beedle, and then heading off to the Coliseum to engage in some one-sided slaughter and scavenge for good weapons, avoiding the Lynel so as not to get tied up in a long fight. The whole time he kept an eye toward that mountain, waiting and waiting for the glow. He has a week. If it didn’t come in that time period -- which it very well might not -- well, he’d have to head back to the desert and put it off again in favor of actually productive work. 

On the third morning, though, just as Link had been about to traipse back toward the Coliseum, seriously considering just going ahead and engaging the Lynel because he  _ wanted  _ another of those bows, something held him back. He’d stared toward the mountain, then back in the direction of the Coliseum, then back to the mountain again. He’d stood there for so long that Aliza had wandered up and condescendingly asked him if he was really awake yet. 

Then, he’d snapped out of it and taken Ruby out, and headed toward the mountain. 

Ruby snorts, turning her head toward him as though in question, and he realizes he’s just been letting her wander for a while. He takes the reins up again, even though she’s stayed perfectly on the trail. 

There's still no glow, but it's also still daylight, even with the dismal weather, and Link has no real reason to expect there to be. The same odd feeling has led him to goddess statues and dragons and the like, so he's following it, but he still has no real reason to expect anything, and keeps telling himself that. 

Best case scenario, there's some treasure, maybe even just a Korok, or if he's lucky a shrine to warp back to if he sees that weird glow again. 

Leaving the woods, Link almost isn't sure how to approach the mountain, but there's something like a path off to the left. Fortunately Ruby is well accustomed to passing terrain that horses probably shouldn't, but Link gets off to lead her by the twins anyway. She plods along behind him. 

Crows are flapping about somewhere up on the mountain, casting flickering shadows across the grey afternoon sky, and Link catches glimpses of plenty of other animals about -- deer and foxes and birds of all kinds -- though they avoid him and Ruby. Nothing so far has jumped out to attack, even down in the woods they passed through, but Link keeps his sword in hand just in case. 

Stalnox bones. That's the first really notable thing Link comes across, aside from some ore and various wildlife. So there's a stalnox here at night, but that in itself isn't quite unusual enough. That wouldn't explain the glow or the  _ feeling _ . 

Link leads Ruby to a safe and relatively level area, leaves her there to graze, tells her to stay, and begins climbing, praying the rain will hold off for longer. 

There is indeed a shrine. Link activates it, relieved that at least there's that and the trip therefore isn't really wasted, but decides to return to it later. Probably during the night if the glow doesn't mysteriously appear again.

The top of the mountain isn't too notable. It's cold, but the air is crisp and the view is good. The clouds seem to clear a little while he’s up there, just enough to take that electric crackle from the air, making his nerves steady. Link does find a Korok, and plenty of eggs - crow eggs, he guesses, though he snatches them anyway because he isn't picky if he doesn't think too hard about it -- and an excellent vantage point down the mountainsides. 

There's plenty of vegetation, which Link itches to go down and collect, but there's also something else -- a pond with water so clear that the faint beams of sunlight filtering through the cloud cover seem to bend off it and crystallize in the air, glancing through the leaves and pink blossoms of a single overhanging tree. 

Looking at it Link gets that  _ feeling _ again, and it's on the proper side of the mountain, from what he can judge, to match up with the glow. 

He climbs all the way back down to Ruby and braids her mane like the stablehands have taught him, and feeds her six apples. She'd probably eat a seventh, but he's wasted just the amount of time he wanted, and so he leaves her with a pat and starts the climb back up, reaching the top exactly as the sun dips below the horizon, just in time for the sky to have cleared itself of clouds even more, letting the stars prick through into the dark. 

Link isn't sure how he misses it. Maybe he fell asleep for a minute, comfortable in his Snowquill tunic and propped against the rocks, or maybe he was in a trance. He was thinking about Ruby, about catching her on Hebra almost by accident, about how she follows him anywhere and always comes running and carries him even when he sleeps and drools into her mane, and how she just might be the closest thing he has to a proper friend -- she's certainly the one being in Hyrule he's spent the most time with -- and somehow, while he's caught up getting emotional over a horse, something happens. 

If it glows, Link hardly notices it. The whole pool does sort of glow, and so does the thing in it, but it's a more lively blue than the green of spirits. 

It's blue like the Blupees that dart around it, ghostly feet skimming the surface of the water without so much as a ripple. 

Link aims the Slate's camera at it. 

_ Lord of the Mountain _ , or so the Compendium says. 

Huh. 

It's blue, and sort of glowing, and sort of like a horse and a deer and an owl and something else Link hasn't seen before, and it has two faces. One of them might be looking at him. It's hard to tell. 

It's hard to keep looking at it, between the glowing and the weird awe-and-dread combination that's frozen Link in place, but he tries to watch it anyway. 

The creature and the Blupees are all near-silent, spectral against the dark. Even in the nighttime, the whole area is bright as day, though the light isn't like that of the sun. Link keeps staring, mostly at the odd reflection in the surface of the still water, and he wonders. 

Surely it'd be sacrilegious to try and ride it. It might even kill him. 

He looks back in the direction of where he left Ruby, and then at the creature again. In the span of those few seconds it moved, just ever so slightly, and now he feels like it's _ really  _ looking at him. Like it  _ sees  _ him, even up here half-hidden and theoretically covered by darkness. It sees him and it isn't afraid. 

Link isn't exactly afraid either, he realizes after a long moment. Awestruck maybe, but not afraid. That  _ feeling _ isn't ever one of fear, and it's always brought him to things like dragons, who aren't evil and don't wish him harm. 

This creature is probably the same, or so Link hopes. He's almost content just to watch it and have seen it. Almost. 

It turns, just ever so slightly, presenting a bit more of its glowing flank. It's a move Ruby might make if Link were taking too long picking mushrooms at the side of the road. It's a bit of a challenge.  _ Get on or I'll leave without you.  _

It probably isn't like that. Link hesitates. 

The creature moves, its strange hooves lifting and falling soundlessly, though Link feels like he can hear some echo from it in his head. It comes a few feet closer, stops, and turns again, lowering its great head. 

Link doesn't hesitate anymore. He doesn't think anymore either, whipping out the glider on sudden instinct and diving toward the Lord of the Mountain. 

It moves so fast it's hardly visible as motion, dipping out of Link's way. He dives to catch it, fingers slipping across it's oddly-smooth body, cold but not too cold, clearly living but absolutely mythical. Link's fingers tingle at the touch. 

They practically play tag together for a few moments, Link and the creature. The Blupees scatter to get out of the way. Link's fast, but he's not nearly as fast as a horse. He's always relied on outmaneuvering them, sneaking up on them, enticing them. The Lord of the Mountain is too clever, and much faster than a horse, making quick turns that should be impossible and wheeling around so fast it blurs. 

It doesn't escape, though, not immediately. It lets Link's fingers brush against its glowing tail, which feels like the finest silk threads but only half-tangible, and then it slips away again. Even with its size and the confined area, Link has no hope of catching it. It's playing with him. They dart back and forth, Link trying vaguely to cage the creature in but having no real hope of doing so, lunging at it whenever it gets close -- he’s pulled himself onto Lynels’ backs by a handful of mane before after all -- but the Lord of the Mountain is so quick and its hide is so smooth, its mane almost feeling like running his fingers through a gentle stream, that there’s no hope of getting so close. 

Link has to stop, eventually, and catch his breath. The creature stops too, some ten feet away. It glows in the corner of his eye, and he trusts it not to attack him, or so he hopes. 

A snort comes from behind. 

When Link turns, Ruby stands there looking impatient. However she got here, her stance implies she isn't leaving. Link starts to go to her, to distance her from the creature, just in case, and also to reassure her she isn't being replaced, so she won't bite him out of spite. He stops, torn, and looks back. 

The Lord of the Mountain is still there, facing away past the tree and raising and lowering a back hoof idly against the surface of the water. Its massive head dips slightly, almost in Link's direction, and then raises away again. 

Link turns back to Ruby. She snorts at him again. 

When he turns back for a last longing glance at the Lord of the Mountain, it's gone. Not entirely, but enough; its strange outline is still imprinted not far from where it stood, as though it went to jump off the cliff and disappeared into midair, all without making a sound. The glow in the area remains, though dimmer, fading. The Blupees are gone. 

Dazedly Link pats Ruby's neck, leaning on her side. She's warm and real, all course hair and dense muscle and hot breath. 

She's the only mount he needs, of course, but Link still wants to ride the Lord of the Mountain.

It didn’t seem too opposed, really. He hopes it found the chase fun. He certainly did, lost in the adrenaline and the weird feeling of safety, that the creature wouldn’t intentionally hurt him. 

He’ll come back to complete the shrine, anyway. He’ll be here again. And now he can teleport here the instant he sees that glow from anywhere across Hyrule. It’ll be silly, and it’s definitely foolish and pointless, but he wants to  _ win _ .

Ruby presses her head insistently into Link’s shoulder until he gives her attention again, nearly knocking him over, and it makes him laugh aloud, alone with his horse and up a dark mountainside in the middle of the night. 

He’ll be back, he tells himself, heart feeling lighter than it really has in weeks, somehow. There’s a heaviness here, and a tranquility and an  _ ancient  _ sort of energy, but it’s calm, and the Lord of the Mountain is intelligent and  _ playful. _ None of the other spirit-beings, save for the Koroks, have been that way. 

Maybe, in the end, it isn’t a waste of time. 


	8. weapon

Link is perfectly capable of using pretty much anything as a weapon. Maybe that’s something he specialized in during his past life; maybe he was even more dangerous then with a boat oar or a tree branch than he is now, hard as it is to envision. But Link likes to imagine his past self as having been a little chaotic too. The Shrine can’t have changed him that much. Back then he probably liked fire, and just didn’t get a chance to engage in it much, having to be so serious all the time. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, in order to make himself feel better. 

The Plateau served as an excellent training ground. Link is almost loathe to admit it, seeing as he spent all his first month of life there just trying to figure out a way down, but it’s true. He learned to fight with tree branches and stolen clubs and fire and even his own teeth in a pinch. 

Knowing that that annoying old man was actually the dead King of Hyrule only provides the vaguest hint of shame, vastly overshadowed by guilty amusement and something almost vengeful. 

_ Good,  _ Link thinks,  _ glad he got to see what I became.  _

Link isn’t even sure why he feels any shame at all over it, though. It wasn’t like he woke with the Master Sword in his hand, ready to take on Ganon. He had to relearn  _ everything _ . It’s likely that with such a sharp object at hand during those first few days, he’d have lost a limb.

His body remembered how to fight, of course, just like it remembered a lot of things. The motions were fluid and natural, even on that first day when he met a red Bokoblin and had no idea what it was. He’d seen it come lumbering at him with a club and reflexively pulled out that stick he’d picked up earlier on a whim, and his body turned out to know exactly what to do with it. Even with his newly-awoken shakiness and weak muscles, even with his confused mind, the fight had been purely one-sided. The tree branch shattered on the last hit, Link picked up the Bokoblin’s discarded club, and never looked back. Since that first day it’s been a constant swapping and upgrading of weapons, always seeking something that will last, something that will withstand his own strength and the trials he puts it through. 

The Master Sword provides that now, of course, but it took months of trial and error and slaughter and weapon-trading to get to the point where he could pull it, and even it isn’t completely invulnerable. 

During most of that interim time, when he was training to pull the Sword, Link’s favored weapon was a bow. Something light and flexible, preferably, with an quick draw but just enough power to make it count. Something he could aim on horseback or in midair or from a perch on the side of cliff in the dark, sending fire arrows cascading down into a monster camp one after another until all became chaos. Rito and Gerudo bows are generally his pick for these purposes, even now. The Master Sword’s weird light beams are hard to aim and not always practical, especially for hunting or taking out sentries in near-silence like Link can do with a good bow.

Getting Revali’s bow was  _ extremely _ exciting, but only for about two minutes. Primed as it is for aerial combat, it is large and heavier than it looks, not to mention Link’s powerful fear of breaking it. It went on the wall of his Hateno house eventually after carrying it around for a few months practically unused. Harth’s offer to repair it came as a nice surprise, but Link hopefully pulling out a nearly-destroyed falcon bow instead was met with disdain.

“There’s no hope for that. You can leave it here for me to  _ try _ and salvage something from it, and you can  _ just this once _ take that new one on the table, but the way you treat bows is abominable. I hope you know that.”

Link left sheepishly with the new bow -- thinking that is probably  _ exactly  _ what Revali might’ve said -- knowing he could always weasel another out of Teba or the Gerudo guards who’ve grown somewhat fond of Link, though their exasperation is a fairly high price to pay for a bow when he can just go annihilate monsters with a tree branch and rob them of theirs. He considers it almost like testing himself, these days, using monster-forged weapons in lieu of proper ones. Plenty of them can still pack a punch, even when they’re shoddily made and unwieldy. 

Revali’s bow, though, has started coming with him again on his travels. Just in case, he thinks. Just in case he needs something extremely well-made and extremely precious. 

He’d probably rather die and face Mipha than break Revali’s bow, but that’s beside the point. It’s nice to have. The Master Sword is his primary weapon now, and it seems prudent to also carry a reliable bow. 

The first time Link uses Revali’s bow again is a complete accident. It actually comes in conjunction with Link using Revali’s Gale, soaring up to escape a very angry silver lynel and desperately whipping out a bow and a shock arrow to stun it, and there it is in his hand, Revali’s precious weapon. It almost feels like it isn’t quite an accident.

It has to be an accident. 

The second time Link uses it is deep in Hebra, firing a bomb arrow at a frost talus. Again, he hadn’t meant to grab it. He’s usually pretty accurate with getting a weapon out of the Slate, even if he isn’t looking and his hands are very much full with other things. Sure, his bow inventory is low, and so Revali’s was more likely to be picked at random than usual, but Link keeps it in the first slot. He always avoids the first slot. 

It has to be an accident. 

The  _ third _ time, however, is different. Link is at the Flight Range, having stopped by the Village for bomb arrows and been told by Saki that Tulin is  _ dying  _ to see Link, and that Tulin and his father are training at the Flight Range, and would Link have time to stop by? Just for a few minutes? Link can’t say no, and he goes, and he gets roped into yet another aerial-archery contest within five minutes and he can’t say no to that either. 

His bow, a falcon one, breaks after the second target. He blindly whips out another, except it isn’t completely blindly. He actively avoids the first slot. He  _ knows _ he avoids the first slot. Except there’s Revali’s bow again, heavy in his hands. 

He puts it back. Pulls out another. 

It breaks after two more targets.

He  _ knows _ that bow wasn’t ready to break. He weaseled it out of Teake personally in Gerudo Town three days ago, and he’s used it once at most. Maybe it was used before he got it, and he just didn’t notice the condition. He doesn’t really believe that, but he can try. 

But then he pulls out Revali’s bow again. 

It’s absurd. It’s so ridiculous that Link fails to deploy the paraglider out of a mix of surprise and exasperation, and he falls hard into the icy water. By the time Teba gets down there -- only a few seconds, followed by Tulin -- Link has hauled himself onto the rocks, still sopping wet and already freezing solid, and is laughing like a madman, so hard tears are freezing to his lashes. 

“Dad?” Link hears Tulin ask, a quavor in his voice, “Is Link okay?”

“Good question,” Teba mutters, then stops upon seeing what Link’s holding. He clearly stares at it for a minute while Link tries to contain his near-hysterical laughter, failing miserably and entering a coughing fit, and then Teba sighs.

“Let’s get out of here,” the Rito says. Link couldn’t agree more. 

An hour later, dry and with feeling mostly back in his toes, having both stopped laughing and explained himself, more or less anyway, Link sets the Great Eagle Bow in his lap and stares hard at it. So does Teba. And Tulin. 

“Is Master Revali in there?” Tulin asks out of nowhere. They both turn to look at him. 

“Well,” the fledgling says defensively, “He’s making Link use it, right? So… is he in there?”

Teba and Link look at each other, at that. Teba shrugs. 

Link shrugs too but shakes his head at Tulin, gesturing up and off into the vague direction of Vah Medoh, trying to indicate that if Revali’s anywhere -- and Link assumes that he is -- it’s there, and nowhere else. Certainly not in this bow. If Revali were in it, it’d probably have splintered in Link’s hands already. A shard would’ve landed right in his eye for good measure, and the bow would probably have already found a way to talk. It  _ certainly  _ wouldn’t  _ want  _ to be used, not by Link. 

Tulin gives a thoughtful chirp. 

“Well… even if he’s not in there, it wants you to use it, doesn’t it?”

Link thinks about that and shrugs again. It certainly seems like it. Maybe Revali does want the bow to be used, and he’s trying to tell Link something. Like to pass it on to a capable archer, probably, and to get his filthy hands off it. Or maybe to get on with sealing the darkness. That’s probably more like it. 

Looking down, though, the wood is smooth and weathered in Link’s hands, obviously well cared-for. That’s something Link can’t give it, not having learned proper care for bows since he awoke, since they’ve been replaceable and fragile. 

He’ll take it to Harth, Link decides, and instead of asking for it to be fixed, he’ll ask how to maintain it. Maybe it won’t break like his other weapons if he cares for it well, though he’s not sure where he’ll find the time. He’ll endure Harth’s horrified lecture, and he’ll care for it well, and all the other Champions’ weapons too. Maybe that’s what they want. Link can do that. That’s manageable. If he does that, then maybe he can even bring himself to use the bow on purpose, without it forcing him to. 

Link eyes it suspiciously anyway in his lap. Revali had better not be in there. He’d never hear the end of it. 


	9. palace

The palace in Gerudo Town, where it sits at the head of the main market square, teems with life at all hours of the day and night. Despite the guards at the entrance, hardly anybody is disallowed entry. When Link had first arrived, right at the worst of the problems with both the Yiga and Vah Naboris, the situation had been different, but he’s quickly learned that that isn’t the usual state of affairs. 

Though the position of Gerudo Chief is somewhat hereditary, Link knows that isn’t all that goes into it. It isn’t a throne, a monarchy, or a divine birthright. The Chief is someone widely respected and trusted, and that trust must go both ways. There isn’t much hierarchy here. Practically anyone is welcome in the main hall of the palace, provided they have some vague business there. So when Link limps through the arches, glad to escape the heat of mid-morning, he isn’t terribly surprised at the general commotion. 

Much earlier this morning, just before sunrise, Link was surprised by a Yiga blademaster deep in Akkala. They’ve been appearing in increasingly odd places. It seems Link can hardly go a week anymore without one appearing at his back in the middle of the night. 

Annoying as it is, it doesn’t usually cause him too much concern. He’s perfectly capable of taking them on, even in the middle of a Guardian fight, as he discovered a few weeks ago. It’s just another angle to cover, another target to add, another instinct to activate in terms of where to dodge and how to move. It doesn’t change anything. He fights them because running makes him feel weirdly guilty, even though they’ll just teleport away at the end and eventually appear again. Even if he killed one, which he hasn’t done -- or so he thinks -- something in Link is suspicious that they’d just revive at the next blood moon. The smell that they leave behind when they teleport away is too close to the stench of Malice to think otherwise. 

It is concerning, though, how much the frequency of the attacks have increased lately. They’ve only ever gone for him before, but what if they start attacking lone travellers, stables, settlements? They’ve always been a problem for the Gerudo and travellers through the desert; what if they change tactics and become a threat to the rest of Hyrule? The Gerudo are well-accustomed to fighting them, and so is Link, but what about everyone else? 

It’s a thought that makes Link nervous, so he’s come to talk to Riju and see if she has any news from that corner of the desert where they reside. Link wonders if their hideout is quite as empty as he left it. 

“Here for an audience with Riju?” a deep voice rumbles at his shoulder, and Link jumps. Too caught up in his thoughts and all the noise and colors of the Gerudo wandering in and out of the palace, he’d not noticed anyone approach. 

“It might be a while,” Buliara continues, staring eagle-eyed at the Chief’s chair, where Link can’t even see over all the tall bodies between. 

“Captain Teake is guarding her today,” Buliara growls, “As I’ve been assigned a  _ rest _ .”

It certainly doesn’t look like she’s resting, from her ever-present intimidating stance to the hard look in her eyes, but she does look tired. 

_ Troubles?  _ Link signs at her, grateful that she understands the hand-language that’s faded so much even among the Gerudo, who claim to have had part in its creation, ages and ages ago. 

“Plenty,” she mutters, then pauses before continuing almost reluctantly. “But no more than usual, it seems.”

_ Y-I-G-A? _ Link spells out, having no idea of whether there’s a sign for that or not. He feels a bit bad about questioning Buliara on her forced day off, but she approached him first, and she will definitely have answers for him if any are to be had at all. 

“Not many. It’s almost suspicious. After you went after the Helm there was silence for a while, if you remember, before they came back with a vengeance. This time there has just been silence, ever since you went back. But they aren’t gone. Make of that what you will.”

There’s silence for a minute, both of them looking in Riju’s general direction, both of them glancing with a guard’s reflexes at everyone who passes through the doors or slips down one of the corridors. No one, Link notices, climbs the stairs up to the personal chambers above. No one even tries. The palace may be open, even the training grounds, barracks, and armory, and certainly the diplomatic rooms, but the upstairs is still off-limits, and it seems uncontested. 

A pair of merchants a few feet away argue without heat about a new trade initiative. Something about the Bazaar. A third bored woman with them fans herself, staring off into the square. Link looks back at Buliara. 

_ I see them in Hyrule,  _ he tells her.  _ At night. Everywhere now.  _

Buliara makes a disgruntled sound. “Bold of them. But hard to expect anything else. They’re after you, still, then?”

Link half-shrugs, nods, makes a face under the veil. Buliara just chuckles, looking him briefly up and down. 

“Was that all you came for? A report on the Yiga?”

He nods again, feeling a bit silly. It’s reassuring to know they haven’t been particularly active in the desert, in a way, and then in another way it isn’t. But that’s not something Buliara can help with. 

_ Enjoy your rest, _ he tells her, only half-jokingly. 

She snorts. “You too.” 

He laughs, at least until she narrows her eyes and leans down a bit, right into his personal space while somehow still towering over. Her muscles are suddenly very, very defined, and all Link can think about is the force with which she slams the tip of her spear into the ground, and how he wouldn’t like to be on the end of it. 

“You  _ too _ ,” she rumbles ominously. “If the inn is full at the moment, the Chief has requested that I inform you of the guest quarters here. Up those stairs, around the corner and to the left. Pick a room. There are six. Preferably not one with an honorable  _ vai  _ already inside of it, if you would like to continue living.”

Link gulps, leaning backwards, and gives her a thumbs up. He glances back up to Riju, finding her still surrounded and inaccessible, before looking back to Buliara and seeing only her retreating back as she heads for the stairs herself. 

If one of those rooms is hers, it’s probably for the best that he disappears entirely now, just in case. But she looks back at him, briefly but sharp-eyed, and he thinks better of it.

Maybe he’ll just knock first. Gently. But firmly. Several times. 


	10. link

Link is starkly aware of the rumors surrounding himself that carry around Hyrule. He’s also aware of the tales of the Hylian hero a hundred years ago, which persist mainly in Hateno, though the hero’s name was lost to time. Throughout the rest of Hyrule the mention of the hero is almost like a curse, something derisive. Nowhere but Hateno is it story of sacrifice. It’s always a story of failure. Even those in Hateno who speak of the hero who defended the Fort -- whose actions helped save the village from total destruction -- know it as a story of failure, and they shake their heads when they mention it. 

From what Link’s heard, by stopping and listening to older people talk or by overhearing a conversation at stables, the fabled princess is seen as exactly that -- someone mythical, someone who may have never existed. The most concrete statements that Link’s heard about her are that she must have ascended somehow when the Calamity struck, and it is her spirit and the power of her bloodline alone which kept all from being destroyed. 

Link thinks that might be reassuring to Zelda, at least in some way. To know that the descendents of those who called her an heir to a throne of nothing, and a failure, do not remember those words. It is not the Hylian princess who failed the people of Hyrule, not as far as they know. 

And it wasn’t. Zelda didn’t fail them, Link tells himself. She activated her powers in the end, and Link was the one to fall.

Of course the situation hadn’t been a good one. Everyone had their part and their own failings, and Link knows that, even from his scattered memories. Zelda, her father, the Champions, the Sheikah, everyone. They all did what they thought was best, and it all turned out to failure, and it had to have been a combination of all those things that made it turn out the way it did, just like anything else. 

But Link can’t escape the thought that if he had only survived five more minutes, ten more, a day, things might have gone differently. If he had gotten back up, it could’ve been ended a hundred years ago. All of the suffering -- a hundred years of it -- of all the races of Hyrule could’ve been prevented, just by Link holding out a little bit longer. Yes, the Champions still would’ve died, and Zelda’s father and everyone at the castle, everyone who had already suffered and died up to that pivotal point, and Link knows there must’ve been plenty of them. There  _ were  _ plenty of them. The devastated state of Central Hyrule, even after a hundred years, is a testament to that. But if Link had gotten back up, it all would’ve ended there. 

That’s the thought that haunts him in the strangest moments. 

It hits when he's wasting time doing something meaningless, something he can only half-heartedly argue is an aid to his journey, like helping Finley get a letter to her beloved, or seeking out someone to send to Tarrey Town, or mining gems to upgrade armor he doesn't even use all that often. He should be moving on, doing only what absolutely needs to be done, mechanically working hard at doing his penance. 

It hits worse when he's doing things he  _ should  _ be doing, but he's struggling at them or failing entirely. Every little failure is a stark reminder of how it could happen again, how in the crucial moment when he faces the Calamity, at the end of everything, he could still fail and this time there would be no other chances, not for anybody. 

It hits worst of all when he hears any talk of the dead hero, or of himself. 

The dead hero is a curse, a blight on Hylian history, a fraud and a failure who destroyed the lives of generations and contributed to the hardships of those who still survive. Even in Hateno where he is a martyr, he is still a failure. Stories of the hero are sometimes slightly disgusted, but mostly sorrowful. The hero could not do his singular duty. The hero failed. 

The rumors Link hears about himself, the current self, are generally less painful. They're embarrassing, but amusing if he manages to look at it from other people's points of view. He's seen as a friendly traveller, perhaps a fool but not completely unhinged, always willing to help, and tougher than his appearance would suggest. Most rumors involve some kind of violence and some kind of chaos, but end in  _ well, crazy or not, he came through for my friend. I think he's trustworthy, even if he doesn't have all his marbles.  _

Hearing those stories soothes Links guilt slightly over all the pauses he's made in his quest to help people, especially since he feels so pressed to do it out of a sense of duty and penance more than anything, though he does genuinely like to help people, but he can't help but consider how quickly that narrative would shift if these people could ever know who he really is and what he's done.

He wonders how people would process the truth. Whether they could accept that he and the dead failure-hero are the same being. He wonders if they'd cast him out, if their fond exasperation would turn to the disgust he feels at thinking about it. 

There's no point dwelling on it, and Link knows that, and he always tries to distract himself when the thoughts come, but it never works as well as he hopes. It always leaves him sleepless and guilty and sends him off to power through a few more shrines, give the Trial of the Sword another try, and feel even guiltier when he doesn't make it all the way through yet again. The Master Sword itself took long enough to pull, too long by any counts. It knew that Link wasn’t worthy, and he’s convinced most of the time that it still thinks so. If its former master failed with the Sword in his hand, if even he proved himself unworthy in the end, then how could the current Link ever hope to be?

Link feels like he can't relate to the dead hero. He doesn't remember any of that. He's constantly torn between feeling like a failure for not remembering, and some kind of imposter in the hero's body playing at being the same person, and being frustrated by the assumption that they're the same person at all. 

It's worse when people do know him. It's awful when they speak of Link remembering his past as if that's something he wants or needs to do. 

Maybe it is. Maybe he could function better if he could just remember it all and be that person again, and be truly accountable, and not be resentful. Maybe the Link of a hundred years ago wouldn't struggle this way. Maybe he wouldn't even care what people say, and he'd already have faced Ganon by now, and it'd all be over. 

Or maybe he'd be dead again, because there was just something wrong with him all along and he was never capable of doing his duty. 

None of the possibilities are reassuring, and ultimately Link doesn't know. He has no way of knowing. 

He sought out the memories from the pictures on the Slate because Impa told him to, and because it seemed important. They don't feel like  _ his _ , though; he doesn't remember what it really felt like to be there or what he might've been thinking or feeling, if he was even capable of either of those back then, and that's somehow worse than not remembering anything at all. 

He's supposed to remember the Champions from seeing the tiniest glimpses into interactions with them, and he's supposed to remember  _ himself _ from just the knowledge that he was there, that this body existed back then and witnessed those events and surely had  _ some _ kind of reaction to them.

It's dizzying trying to reconcile himself with the dead hero. It's uncomfortable. It makes Link feel a bit sick. 

When he thinks about it enough, on a good day, he figures he'd rather be known as the helpful travelling madman, the one who appeared out of nowhere, helped populate Tarrey Town, fulfilled dozens of small wishes and favors, and then disappeared again without a trace. Link has already decided that if he defeats Ganon, that's how it has to be: he has to disappear somehow, and not be seen again. Because then people might know, might connect the two and actually believe it, and Link doesn't think he can live with that. 

If he survives facing Ganon, he has to leave. 

It's not so bad a thought; there's a world beyond Hyrule, he's sure, and he's proven himself adept at surviving unknown things at least. If he can survive Ganon -- and on his darker days he isn't sure he wants to, but he largely chooses not to focus on that -- then he can survive any other danger or unknown, even if that somehow excludes the thought of  _ being  _ known, as himself. He's certain that's something he can't survive. 

Every day the time to go to the castle gets closer, and as he does more work around Hyrule he only hears more rumors and talk, much as he tries not to listen.

People sound cautiously hopeful. They sound intreagued, sometimes just amused. They talk of monsters decreasing in number even as the monsters grow stronger. They talk about Guardians in Central Hyrule and Akkala deactivating overnight now, just days after being reanimated by the blood moon, along with Lynels and whatever else.

The people of Hyrule, after all this time, want to believe in something. Link knows that. He sees it. He hears it from children and from travellers, even if the latter don't say it directly. They want things to be better. When they see things change even a little, they look for a reason -- a hopeful one -- and any will do, especially if said jokingly. Link's heard plenty.

But it surprises him, still, when he hears rumors of the ghost of the dead hero walking the land, righting the wrongs of a hundred years ago. That comes as a genuine shock

It stops him dead for a second at the Outskirt stable, ignoring the whines of the dog he was about to feed, unable to believe his ears.. 

"You really believe that?" Botrick says mildly to a pair of young travellers. "I mean, not discounting it. More power to him."

One of the travellers is offended. "We've seen him! In Central Hyrule, just a few weeks ago. Cut down a Guardian in seconds. One of those stalkers, fast as anything. Took out its legs one at a time. All with just a sword, and it glowed blue like no metal you've ever seen. It had to have been the Sword of Legend."

Botrick laughs. "And what'd he look like? Was he glowing too?" 

"Didn't get a good look at him," the woman mutters, "It was dark, and he had a hood on."

"That could've been anybody," Botrick says patiently, almost patronizing. "Even Link over there. He's got a hood and a broadsword. Why don't you ask him if he can take down a Guardian all by himself in the middle of the night?" 

Link is suddenly very, very glad that the sword on his back is not, in fact, the Sword of Legend, and that the sword in question ran out of energy half an hour ago and hasn't even reappeared in his inventory yet. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so grateful for his infinite ability to break things. 

The couple turns to look at him where he stands frozen. Their faces are extremely unimpressed. 

"You don't understand," the woman tells Botrick when she turns back, dismissive and clearly miffed. "Just wait till you see for yourself."

Botrick merely chuckles, and waves at Link as the couple stalk toward the stable. Mechanically Link waves back, before traipsing off to teleport away and hopefully never return. Whatever he came here for is no longer a priority. 

After that he listens a little harder, not even on purpose, and within weeks he hears that story repeated over half of Hyrule. And a few different and sometimes older variations. And some absurd claims that  _ definitely  _ did not happen, at least not like they're being told. 

Sure, Link took out a monster camp from the air a few weeks ago, courtesy of Revali's Gale and some well-placed fire arrows, but that doesn't mean he can fly. It certainly doesn't mean he can light fires with just his mind. And it  _ certainly _ doesn't mean he dematerialized and left all the spoils of conquest behind, having no use for physical items as a spirit, the story leaving out how he ran out of energy midair and plummeted into freezing water, only managing to claw his way into shore half a mile down the river and was too sore to make his way back up here just to collect Moblin teeth. 

But if the people want to believe the ghost of the hero is here to better the world, Link supposes it's best to just let them. It's certainly better than trying to tell them the truth, if any of them would even believe it. 

In a twisted way, Link supposes it isn't even that far from the truth, really. The hero's ghost may not be back and saving Hyrule, but his body is, or at least is trying to. Surely that's better than nothing, given the situation, and most of the time Link is focused and doing his best, and most of the time he believes he can do this if he just focuses on completing one thing at a time, just keeping in motion. 

Some of the rumors almost even make him smile, when it isn't too disorienting. Like the one about the hero's ghost sprouting Rito wings and flying up to Vah Medoh. Link's sure Revali would  _ not  _ be pleased about that one. 

It's mostly a bit of good fun, he eventually realizes, a way of making a bit of light out of the darkness, as the people of a ruined land tend to do in order to carry on. He does the same himself, when he has the heart for it. 

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, staying in Hyrule, identity revealed or not. He'd certainly like to see the unimpressed couple's faces upon finding out that it was indeed him fighting that Guardian, especially considering they didn't seem to notice him tripping over his own feet and slamming his head into its metal shell hard enough to blur his vision for two whole days. 

Even if it's all a bit overwhelming to think about, Link can see the humor in it. He’s tempted to make ghost noises at night whenever he passes travellers on the road and his hood is obscuring his face. He takes a newfound joy in teleporting just at the edges of people’s vision, such that they wouldn’t be sure if they’d imagined it. 

It’s not really funny, none of it is. But it’s funnier than the alternatives, and Link figures that again, it’s better than nothing. 

He hopes it gives Zelda a laugh at least, if she’s watching. If they both return from the castle, whenever the time does come, he wonders if they’ll be a pair of ghosts made flesh, descending again onto the living world. There are a lot of possibilities for fun with that, too. Link wonders if Zelda might even be willing to play along. 

“I saw the hero’s ghost! I did too see it!” one child insists to another, playing outside a stable on the ground. “It even looked at me, I think.”

“Liar,” the second child says. “My big sister says it doesn’t have eyes.”

“Then how could it see to fight monsters?” the first child asks, tone full of triumph. The other child pauses, visibly stumped, and deflates. 

“My big sister wouldn’t lie. She  _ really _ saw it. When she was coming back from the desert. She  _ said _ it had no face at all. Just a glowy head of shiny spikes.”

Link, from his spot at the cooking pot, minds his business but smiles thinking of the Thunder Helm. It doesn’t fit him any better than it does Riju, and he can hardly see out of it, with the way it keeps slipping down over his whole face.

The children continue to argue, and Link gives his soup an idle stir. Maybe it isn’t so bad, really, being a bit of a ghost. He’s had his times of feeling like one, for sure. Maybe it’s a way in and of itself to reconcile things. 

“Link! Link,” the first child yells, running over at full tilt, “Tell him you’ve seen the ghost! You must’ve seen it, right? Sometime? Does it have eyes?”

Link pauses, thoughtful. The child beams up at him, while the other looks on with doubt. 

He finally shrugs and smiles, giving a nod. The child crows in triumph. 

“See! I told you! Maybe it can shapeshift, though. Maybe it only has eyes when it does need to see the monsters.”

The children carry on, seeming to reach some kind of agreement, and Link mostly tunes it out. His soup is ready, so he starts pouring it methodically into bottles, to scan it into the Slate when no one’s looking too closely. 

Maybe it isn’t so bad, being a ghost. And maybe people don't hate the hero so much after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm finally starting to hit a wall & struggle, not being happy with anything, so this one really startled me when it weighed in at 3k words somehow. maybe quantity over quality is just the real theme of this month lmao


	11. ganon

“It is our history,” Mauva says slowly, taking a long sip of the tea Link brought her. Her eyes fix on the Goddess statue, and she is silent for a moment. Link doesn’t interrupt. 

“Do you know… Well. Perhaps you do," she mumbles, pausing again. "Perhaps even from Lady Urbosa herself."

Link's eyes widen. The early morning sun glints in Muava's eyes, betraying their unexpected sharpness. 

"I know you aren't what you seem, little  _ voe _ . You have been inside Vah Naboris, and you carry the Daybreaker on your back… Yes, I recognize it. No, I am not so old as to have lived in the time of Lady Urbosa herself, but I have seen that shield in the little books mothers draw for their children, heard it described in poems… And," she says, pausing again, maybe relishing in Link's apprehension, "Our chief commends you, and she has given it to you, and she would not give it to any Hylian  _ voe. _ "

Link stares at her helplessly, then shifts his gaze away to the trash heap further down the alley, where he found a perfectly good bow last week. Muava had laughed and called him a bokoblin.

They've grown to be almost friends, in a strange way, with how he frequents Gerudo Town and this Goddess statue in particular. He brings her tea and sometimes things he's tried to bake, and she is a harsh critic of them. She tells him stories of her youth. She isn't demanding. She asks no questions and doesn't speculate, at least not until now. 

"I say this because I know that you must know more than perhaps anyone assumes," she eventually continues, once she's seen Link squirm for long enough. 

_ I probably know less _ , he thinks, but he doesn't say it. 

"But regardless, little  _ voe _ , do you know that the Calamity itself was once a Gerudo?"

Link reels slightly at that, spilling tea all over himself. 

“Yes,” she says, stopping to swig from the rapidly-cooling mug in her hands, wipe her mouth, and cackle. “Somehow I didn’t expect you to be so surprised.”

While Link tries to wipe up the tea and tries to process that information, Mauve hums thoughtfully to herself.

“How do I tell it… It isn’t exactly a bedtime story for a  _ vehvi,  _ you know. Few people know it anymore, even those of my age… My own  _ vaba  _ told it to me, and my mother scolded her for it. She said ‘I didn’t need to know that at a young age, why should Muava? Stop speaking of it, mother. No one needs to talk of those things anymore…’ Well, my  _ vaba _ just laughed and promised not to speak of it, but she told me all kinds of things on the days my mother was at her market stall. Things were hard then and no tourists came here, and all we children stayed with our  _ vaba _ all day while our mothers and aunts were gone, sometimes for weeks, even months. I spent a lot of time with my  _ vaba _ . And she told me about Ganondorf, or so he was called, when he was a Gerudo.”

Without even realizing it, Link is leaning forward like a child himself listening to a story, still dripping tea. Mauve gives him a crooked grin and points at his twisted veil and he yanks it back into place. No one ever comes back here, but Link knows very well that it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

“Where was I… Well, the Calamity, or so my  _ vaba _ said, did not begin as a Gerudo, nor did it end as one. It began as a terrible evil, and it becomes a terrible evil again and again, in ways I do not know. She said that it took many forms. Whatever it was called in the beginning, she also did not know. Maybe the Sheikah remember. But that was thousands of years ago, and it did not involve the Gerudo. 

“So there was this terrible evil, this  _ primal  _ evil, which could be defeated but was doomed to return, and until the time of Ganondorf, that had been a problem for Hylians and other races. We had little dealings with the Kingdom of Hyrule, whatever Hyrule was like in those days. We had our own history, our own land. And our own king.”

Link cocks his head at that, and Muava nods to acknowledge it, the way one might a child raising a hand in class. 

"We had kings, in that era, though not always. My  _ vaba _ says that it was always a succession of chieftains, and those chieftains can be traced back for thousands of years, sometimes by blood and other times by worth. The chieftains were always respected, and there was always a chieftain. 

"You see it now, with Chief Riju. Her mother -- may her spirit be watching -- died, and so her daughter became Chief, and this is by respect of the people. There are processes to be rid of a chieftain who is failing in her duty to the Gerudo, though that has not happened in my time, or even in the time of my  _ vaba _ . Since Lady Urbosa, at least, the line has been good. 

But yes, though there is always a chieftain, and it was the same in those days, sometimes there was a king. 

"Once every hundred years a male Gerudo was born, or so they said then. My  _ vaba _ would laugh at that. 'The Gerudo genes are too strong,' she would say, 'but everyone has superstitions.' Regardless, there was sometimes a male Gerudo born, and because of those superstitions, it was said that the male Gerudo was born to be a king of the Gerudo people, and that it was a good omen, a sign of a fortunate era." Muava stops to laugh, but it turns into a hacking cough. 

Link shifts and re-pins his veil entirely, just to be safe. Muava keeps coughing, so he digs out a honey candy and gives it to her. 

"Ha!" she says, "I haven't seen one of these in twenty years. Didn't think they made them anymore." She pops it in her mouth, makes a considering face, then finally nods, seemingly pleased. 

"Anyway, Ganondorf was a male Gerudo, born to be a king, in the tradition they still kept then. He was the last true Gerudo king.

"The part of the story they do like to tell, the part my mother and aunts would've accepted and that's still told to every  _ vehvi _ today, is the part of the Gerudo chieftain who took the role of his general, during his rule. Her name was Nabooru, and she is the namesake for Vah Naboris. She's said to guide and guard the thing, and that her spirit blesses it still. 

"Ganondorf was, at first, not a bad king. But the Gerudo were not in a good era, and his birth did not create fortune. He decided, somehow, to scheme against the Hylians and the other races, to take their land, saying that the Gerudo are banned to the desert to starve, and it is the fault of those outside the desert that the Gerudo were suffering and had descended into the state they were in, during his rule. This is not true -- we Gerudo have always lived in the desert, so far as anyone knows, but in the time of Ganondorf there was famine and suffering and tension with the peoples of Hyrule. 

"My  _ vaba _ didn't know any details, which is just as well, as I'm sure half of what she did know is fabricated. But she knew that Ganondorf was the last Gerudo King, and that he went against the Hylians, and became something else: maybe it was born into him, maybe his grievances and thirst for power led him to it, but he proved to be a vessel for that ancient evil, the same one as the Calamity.

"Nabooru did not believe in Ganondorf's methods and saw that he had changed. She led her own people against him, against everybody, and aided the Hylian who eventually destroyed him. She gave her own life, her own mortality. It is said that she ascended to be a sage, to guide the hands of those who still lived into defeating the evil and bringing peace.

"It was her sacrifice that saved not only the Gerudo from entering a war we could not win, not without becoming part of the evil, but also the rest of Hyrule.

"And Ganondorf was defeated. And he was the last true king of the Gerudo, though the evil has been called Ganon through the ages, and though at other times the evil has again taken the form of a Gerudo.

"Not this time, of course," Muava says, gesturing out onto the land. "I haven't seen the Calamity myself, you know, but if it is the work of anything human, well."

Link shakes his head absently, thinking of the spiraling Malice-creature around the castle, and the twisted shapes of the Blights. Try as he might, he can't meld that image with an image of a man. 

"Interesting," Muava says. "Then you have seen it, eh, little  _ voe _ ?"

Startled, Link can't even try and deny it, because there's a knowing look in her eye already and she's laughing at him again. 

"Well," she finally continues, "if there's more to the story, I've forgotten it. I'm certainly not the storyteller my  _ vaba _ was, and I've had no one to tell it to anyway. Sometimes I think maybe my mother was right, that it shouldn't be spoken of. But then I think that's a bigger shame."

Link just shrugs. It doesn't change anything, as far as he can tell. When he goes to the castle to face Ganon, it won't matter what shape it takes. Even if it took Link's own shape, he thinks, he'd still have to destroy it. It doesn't matter where it came from, or what it's been. Link may shudder at Guardians, but it hasn't deterred him from using Sheikah technology or respecting the people who create it, eccentric as their descendants can be. 

"It's our history," Muava says with a shrug of her own, breaking through his thoughts and reminding him of how the conversation started. "And it's being lost, bit by bit, because no one wants to speak of it anymore, and because there's no one to listen. So no one knows. But I thought you, perhaps, should; may Lady Urbosa strike me down herself if I am wrong."

Link can very much imagine Urbosa doing that, from what he does remember of her, and the fact that she didn't mention any of this in his encounter with her spirit just a month ago. 

But then again, there wasn't much time, and as Link himself admitted, it doesn't matter. Not to the mission. It doesn't change anything, doesn't affect anything. 

Link's glad to know anyway, though, he decides. He's glad Muava's trusted him with it and thought to tell him. He wonders if the Princess knows, sure that it wouldn't matter to her either, save for appealing to her interest in history. 

Link tries again to picture the face of a male Gerudo, one twisted and corrupted by ancient evil so much as to practically betray his own people, but he can't. The image in his head keeps getting covered in wires and lasers and slick violet Malice, until there's nothing human there at all. 

It's for the best, he decides after a minute. The Calamity is an ancient evil, not a human, and it'll do no good to picture it as one. 

_ Thank you, _ he signs to Muava, but she waves him off. 

"The history lesson is payment for the tea," she says dismissively, "And the candy."

Before he leaves, after she's laid down for a midday nap, Link goes through his inventory and gets out all the honey candies he made last week, placing them carefully nearby in a little pile. 

If Ganon once was a Gerudo, Link thinks, looking down at the sleeping Muava, then Urbosa must also have known it, and he wonders if she ever gave that any thought. He ultimately decided that if she did, it would only further her personal grudge against the evil, and it's up to him to help her see it through. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been concerned i wouldn't even make it this far into the month with the hyper-limited amount of free time i've got, but out of stubbornness/spite i'm totally resolved to continue and finish.  
> i've never started posting any multi chaptered thing unless I've got it completed & edited (which is why I have two 40k and 50k zelda fics that have sat in my docs for a year now, unedited and therefore just rotting...) but something about having a daily deadline is letting me let go of the perfectionism of that and just focus on getting something done. who knew 乁( •_• )ㄏ


	12. mask

Light curves off shining white, arcing into Link’s eyes. It only blinds him for a second, but it’s enough for his opponent to take advantage and lunge. Link backsteps. Avoids being hit, but only by a hair. He shifts his guard, waits, blocks twice with the sun still in his eyes, and doesn’t even need to see as he delivers the final blow. 

The sound of the mask cracking is almost thunderous in the empty desert. Link doesn’t wait to see the Yiga teleport away. 

It’s rare to see one in such broad daylight and undisguised. Link assumes it’s the one that materialized to attack him just before sunrise, that he was too distracted by Lizalfos to deal with. It must’ve followed him across the sands. Regardless, the Yiga is gone now. Link can almost feel his arm still reverberate from the cracking of that mask. Shaking it out does nothing. It isn’t a pain, just a vibration, like a reminder of what he’s just done.

Cracking a Yiga’s mask doesn’t kill them, Link’s pretty sure, but it’s the most efficient way to end the fight if he can manage it. It takes quite a blow, but the Yiga in question always teleports away immediately once it’s done. Link assumes they don’t want to reveal whatever’s underneath. Sometimes he wonders if it’s a human face, like one would reasonably assume it would be, or whether it’s something else. All he can picture are the swirling abominations of the Blights, their evil eyes, their stench, the clicking of the gears and the violet tendrils of Malice. If the Yiga are anything like that, it’s better not to see them, he supposes. But he knows if it were a human face that that’d be worse. 

Link doesn’t know what it is about the masks themselves that he finds so disconcerting. Perhaps it really is just fear of the unknown beneath the masks, but it feels like something else. Once, a disappearing Yiga left a shard of their mask, just the tiniest white shard glinting on the ground. Link had picked it up somehow expecting it to feel like a particularly hard porcelain, judging by the way they shine and the way they shatter. 

It felt like polished bone. 

The shard stayed in Link’s inventory for a week or so until he couldn’t bear to have it with him anymore. He pretended to himself that it was a fear they’d track him somehow through it, and he tossed it into Lake Hylia, bound to a heavy stone. It felt ridiculous. But he felt better with it gone. 

The Yiga themselves don’t really scare Link. Once he stopped associating them with their Hylian disguises, after he’d been told that they  _ used  _ to be Sheikah but are something else entirely now, and that no one knows what they truly look like, he didn’t have to see them as strictly human. And then they’re just like any other monster. Usually easier to defeat. More annoying than threatening. And their lines, when spoken to while disguised, are so obvious and badly-performed that it’s actually incredibly funny. 

The Blademasters are a little more threatening, but they’re easy to outrun, and once Link figured out the trick to evading those painful moves with the Windcleaver they became not much of a challenge either. Not compared to Lynels and Guardians or even a particularly enraged Lizalfo. 

It’s just something about them. The masks. How do the Yiga see through them? It’s certainly magic, and that shouldn’t be too alarming by now, but how do they breathe? How does their laugh come so clear through the material? Why, when Link lands a good hit directly on the mask and it cracks, do they scream so horribly? Sure, it has to hurt; Link’s had armor and shields shatter before and it always ends in some hefty bruises and intense scrapes, but the Yiga don’t react much to other blows. Why does the mask breaking affect them so strongly? 

Morbidly, Link wonders sometimes if they’re somehow physically bound to it by their pledge to Ganon, or if that’s their actual face with nothing underneath. Link knows he could never function underneath such a thing otherwise. 

He has his own fear of his face being covered; it’s a strange crawling sensation, an instinct he’s loathe to dismiss, even if it has no known origin. The Korok mask, sweet and useful as it is, makes Link want to retch if he wears it for a bit too long. Kilton’s masks are out of the question. They make all Link’s hair stand up just to think about. 

Even the Thunder Helm is just on the edge of tolerable, and the Gerudo veil. The Sheikah mask that wraps around Link’s nose and mouth is right there too; it’s a blessing on some days and almost a comfort with its stealth qualities and its anonymity, and on other days even it starts to make him uneasy after a while. 

There’s some fear in his subconscious, an irrational one, that tries to warn Link constantly of something. That’s what it feels like: a warning. In the same way that he wonders if the Yiga are bound to their masks, unable to escape them and wearing them in place of a face, Link fears that the same fate could somehow befall him. 

It’s the thought of being bound to a purpose so inescapably, so completely, as to not even own a face anymore. Link saw it with Maz Koshia and shuddered. There would be no Malice behind that piece of cloth. No face of a Blight, no swirling Malice. He knew it then, as he’d seen the same face covering on dead monks in shrines, but something about seeing Maz Koshia stand and move and speak from behind it felt different -- Maz Koshia, terrifying as he is, is ultimately an ally and Link knows it. But he doesn’t know the monk’s face, doesn’t know the purpose of the cloth. 

Link is somehow obsessed with the idea of  _ purpose _ , convinced that all masks must have one. The veils of Gerudo guards are different. Link knows their purpose, and so it doesn’t raise any anxiety. He knows the purpose of mouth-covering Sheikah armor and has personally benefitted from it. He even doesn’t question the little leaf-faces of the Koroks, because their purposes are their own, and he knows them to be benevolent spirits -- they don’t fall in the category, to Link, of having some identity tied to a mask, some nefarious purpose of wearing one, some strange power derived from it. For all he knows those are their true faces, and they probably are. Link certainly sees them that way. 

He’s tempted sometimes to ask Dorian about the masks of the Yiga, but none of the Sheikah are ever keen to talk about the Yiga at all, and ultimately Link decides it isn’t worth asking. Dorian has already said that what he knows of the Yiga is vague and anecdotal at best, and that he has no answers to Link’s questions, as though knowledge is continually wiped from his mind by the day. Most of all, he doesn’t like to talk about it. No one does. Whatever that odd prickling dread derives from, Link figures he just has to ignore it like all the other irrational feelings he gets sometimes, which he usually dismisses like an odd phantom pain from a hundred years ago. Like when he saw the sea for the first time from the beach of Lurelin and felt he’d been there before, like he knew something of being out on the ocean -- which wouldn’t make sense, knowing what little he does of his past life, but then again he doesn’t know enough to judge. 

Same with an odd feeling he gets at some sunsets, and a slightly different one sometimes in caves, and yet another he got once at some inconspicuous ruins in the middle of Hyrule where he’d killed two Guardians. Some feeling that he’d almost been here before, that he knows something happened here or somewhere like it. It’s only odd that the feeling doesn’t strike in places Link knows he would’ve been a hundred years ago. Even the places he’s found memories are void of it. 

It’s vague, intangible, and inexplicable. Usually it isn’t a bad feeling. Sometimes it is, like with masks, but other times it’s more of a sudden faint longing that goes as soon as it comes, that he can’t make any sense of. 

Link’s answer, or what there is of one, comes in the most unexpected place, the week before he means to go to the castle. 

The Master Sword is nearly at its full power, only the last portion of the Trial of the Sword left to complete. Link is sure that it’s strong enough as is, but is loath to take any chances. He has to complete the Trial. It’s the last thing to be done, the only step he has left to finish before he goes and faces the possible end of everything. He has to be prepared. He has to. 

It’s not any easier with such determination, though. He’d admittedly tried a few times before and given up in favor of completing other tasks. But even now with every bit of his focus, it’s grueling. When it’s done Link plans to sleep for two days in the bed inside of the Deku Tree, and then go. 

Link’s third attempt, during this visit anyway, ends in failure. 

He emerges from the Sword feeling winded and exhausted and sits on the edge of the Master Sword’s pedestal to rest with his head in his hands, even though he isn’t physically hurt. He feels silly. It all feels silly. Here at the end of things, when he should have the highest level of ability he can possibly attain, and he is consistently failing against the Guardians toward what must be the very end of the Trial, barely progressing in each attempt. 

It shouldn’t be this way -- Link hasn’t frozen in fear at the sight of Guardians in a long time now, and he’s usually  _ very  _ adept at taking them out, even in the worst circumstances, and he  _ hates  _ himself for getting so stupidly distracted every time thinking about goddess-knows-what, or thinking about nothing at all until he’s blown into a thousand spectral bits. It’s vexing. Link’s disgusted. 

It’s late at night, but the Koroks don’t typically sleep, so they must be staying away because they sense Link’s foul mood. He sits there rubbing his eyes until stars fill his vision and bangs a fist against his head a few times for good measure. Frustrating.  _ Pathetic _ .

“Frustrated?” the Deku Tree rumbles, making Link jump nearly a foot in the air. “Tell me, what is it that stops you from completing the Trial?”

Link shrugs, cowering a little. He doesn’t look up from his boots, idly noting that one of them needs repairing, though he won’t wear these to the castle anyway. And he certainly won’t have them in the Trial. 

“If there is something which holds you back from your destiny,” the Deku Tree continues ominously, “It is time, now, that you address it.”

There are plenty of things holding Link back. So many that he can’t even count them all. But at the same time, in a different way, there’s nothing. Nothing but himself, his own weakness and inadequacy. He supposes the Deku Tree must already know that, so he doesn’t answer. 

“Have your memories returned to you?”

Link just shrugs again, hunching further over his knees. The Deku Tree remains silent for a minute that feels like an hour. Link can feel the weight of sightless eyes on his back, burning into him. The Deku Tree is unusually talkative today, but just when Link’s sure the conversation is finished, it turns out it isn’t. 

“You have regained memories,” the Tree rumbles in an even darker tone than before, and Link shivers. “But they are not memories which are yours to have.”

Link looks up, questioning. 

“In you, I now see things I have not seen in this age. These  _ memories _ … are not ones which even I, who once beheld some of them myself in a different form, should have. They are no use to you.”

_ Zelda _ ? Link mouths to himself, contemplatively, tasting the name and considering his own memories, but the Deku Tree gives another angry rumble. 

“Not the memories of a hundred years ago. Those you should have attained. I refer to those memories which you did not create, which you have not the right to keep.”

Link turns fully now, wary and confused. 

“I will not speak of it,” the Tree says, “And you would be wise not to as well, but I will warn you of this: to dwell on the things which you have not yourself made, which you cannot use and which you should not have, is not a part of your destiny, nor will it aid you. Do not allow these things to drive you from the path you must take. Do not give power to them. There are some trials which do not exist here and now, which are only distraction. These false, long-departed dangers only serve to divert your attention from the present. You know, child, which things of which I speak, even if you believe you do not.”

Link gets a sudden flash, a vision of light arcing off polished bone in the desert sun, the idea of a howling soul trapped and twisting within it and roaring until the shining thing morphs from smooth white to a cacophony of color and noise, shaking--

He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes deeply. Yes, he thinks he does know what things the Deku Tree means. 

The Tree never says anything else, and Link never tried to answer. He sits for a while longer on the edge of the pedestal, staring off into the woods and ignoring the odd false flickers of that  _ feeling _ that play tricks between the trees -- the only movement are the few Koroks who are still shy around Link, who flit through the undergrowth with little arms waving. He recognizes a few of them. They’re playing a game of chase, now that the Deku Tree has spoken and Link probably looks a bit less unhinged, more at a loss now than anything. 

Looking at their little leaf-mask faces Link feels an odd rush of affection, one which he does recognize as his own, at least. The Deku Tree’s words may have been ever-so-slightly unforgiving and harsh, as most of his advice seems to be, but he isn’t wrong. Link glances back at the place where the Sword should rest, and back at the little running bodies of the Koroks again. 

They’re real, and their real-ness is glaring, right in front of Link. So is the Sword, even if the space within it is not. 

The Yiga are real. The strange things Link’s mind adds to them are not. 

Link himself is real too, even when he feels like he isn’t, and even when it seems like half the memories in his head aren’t. He supposes it doesn’t matter if they ever were, so long as he can tell the difference. 

When he makes a trip to Gerudo Town the next evening -- after completing the Trial in a final, powerful effort -- to get his boots mended, because he just might wear those after all, Link encounters a Yiga in the desert while he hunts a molduga. 

This time its unnerving mask is just a mask, nothing else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (posting this late in the evening for once, bc mostly i've been writing these in the mornings before work and then posting from my phone later once i've had the chance to glance for typos, but today i didn't even get to finish writing it until 8pm lol. but no worries. still technically on time and tomorrow i'll be back on track. mostly i want to explain why this one is sort of meandering and unfortunate, bc no time to do anything else. but there's always tomorrow!)


	13. sheikah

“You sure there’s no Sheikah in you?” Pikango jokingly asks, when Link passes him in Kakariko for the dozenth time. Link stops and cocks his head, confused and wondering if they’ve had a previous conversation he can’t remember, but Pikango just laughs. 

“I asked Cado, out of curiosity. I’d just been assuming you had some family here, and that’s why you keep coming back. They don’t let just anybody see the Elder, you know. You dress and move like a Sheikah, that’s for sure. More than a Hylian. Really surprised me that Cado said no. I asked Paya too, but she just went red as a beet and said didn’t really answer. Said you were just a friend to her grandmother.”

It’s a statement, but phrased almost as a question. Link just shrugs, unsure what there is to say. If the Sheikah aren’t talking about his identity then maybe he shouldn’t either, not that he does anyway. He considers it though, for the rest of that day and a few days after. He dresses like a Sheikah often enough, that’s true; it gets him odd looks fairly often, but he’s never thought anything of it. It was the first functional, helpful armor he’d owned. Claree had been glad to sell it to him, and he still finds it comfortable and useful. As far as moving like a Sheikah, Link isn’t sure what that’s about. He decides maybe it’s because his only formal weapons training since waking came from that shrine in Kakariko. He didn’t think at the time that those moves were particularly Sheikah in origin, and still doesn’t, but it’s the only reasonable explanation. After that he doesn’t think about it again. 

A few weeks later on another trip to Kakariko -- this time for fire arrows, as everywhere else is sold out and he’s stocking up for shrine hunting in Hebra -- he passes Pikango again, deep in conversation with Cado. The two of them see him and Cado waves. Pikango looks startled. Link wonders, but ultimately ignores it. 

Later that night at the inn, it’s harder to ignore. Pikango keeps glancing across the room at him while Link pays. There’s a considering look in his gaze, like he’s searching for something. 

Link approaches him, but Pikango just plasters on a smile and asks how the search for the picture locations is going, and if Link found the last one Pikango had pointed him to. Link stares at him, curious and unimpressed, and watches the smile slip a few degrees. 

_ Why were you staring at me? Were you talking about me with Cado?  _ Link signs, deciding to get straight to the point. 

“I didn’t really understand that,” Pikango admits. “I’m sorry.”

Link sighs. 

_ What’s wrong?  _ He signs instead, having to repeat it twice, slowly, before Pikango shows any recognition. 

“Nothing,” the man says, “Nothing really.”

_ C-A-D-O,  _ Link spells out, prodding. 

“Cado? What about him?”

Link wants to smash his own head through the table, or possibly Pikango’s, but he restrains himself. Pikango has been nothing but friendly and helpful on Link’s journey, after all. He’s one of the faces Link looks forward to seeing at a stable. He’s a major reason why Link has so many memories back now. Link can afford to be a little lenient. 

_ You. Talk. About. Me, _ he signs, exaggerated and deliberate. Pikango wilts a little. 

“Yes… Yes, we did talk about you. Not today, though. That isn’t what we talked about today.”

_ What? _

“Today? The security of the village… The Sheikah are concerned that some enemies are growing bolder. They’re looking to close off the village.”

Link doesn’t have to answer, as his genuinely surprised face speaks for itself. 

“Not to you,” Pikango says quickly, but Link is more unsettled than reassured, and waves for Pikango to go on. The man sighs. 

“Even with all the time I’ve spent here in the past few years, I’ve learned next to nothing about the Sheikah. They guard their secrets well. I’m sure that’s been their survival. They didn’t always let just any outsiders in, though, you know. I first got to come here when I was twenty years old, and two Sheikah guards had to show me the way. Some kind of enchantments obscured the pass. There would be guards on top of the cliffs, watching for travellers… They’re just so few, and they were even then. They only let in trusted merchants, really, back then. You  _ had  _ to be guided in. It wasn’t even enough to just know the way.”

_ You? _ Link asks. 

“Well, I wasn’t a merchant. I was friends with one they trusted, and he’d told me about the beauty of the village here, how it wasn’t something many outsiders got to see… I became obsessed with coming here one day. I started camping at the edge of the pass. No guards ever came down to me. I suppose they figured I wasn’t worth the bother… Anyway, that was around the time that things were changing, and they were opening the village, little by little… I think they didn’t usually guard the pass anymore, just letting the enchantments do their work. But those were fading, too.

“One day, after about a month of sitting there waiting, I felt like maybe I could make it through the pass. My merchant friend had told me what he could remember of the way, which wasn’t much, but I don’t know. The day was beautiful. It was a fine morning… the sun through the clouds, glinting off the wet cliffs after a good rain… Well, I thought maybe I could make it. And that I’d regret not trying.

“So the gist of it is that I got myself lost and two guards came to rescue me. This was thirty years ago, mind you. They appeared through the fog and I’d never seen a Sheikah before. Scared the life out of me. But, they brought me back here, and told me that I couldn’t stay, but that I could find my way here again. And ever since, I have.”

_ So? _

“So Kakariko became less of a hidden village, more open to wanderers. I’m sure you’ve seen that people still really don’t come here, but they can. They’d have a much easier time if they wanted to try. You got here, after all, through that pass.”

Link had thought the path to Kakariko had been fairly straightforward. He hadn’t even thought about anything keeping the village safe. Knowing Impa, of course there would be, but Link just hadn’t given any thought to what it might possibly consist of. 

Regardless, interesting as the topic may be, Link still feels like Pikango is avoiding the original question, so he repeats it. 

“Cado and I weren’t talking about you today. I mean, I asked him before if you were part Sheikah, and he said no. But I’ve just talked to him a lot more since. He’s a lonely man. More willing to have a chat than you’d think, when he’s off duty.”

Link gives Pikango a doubtful look. 

“Fine, it’s… I asked Dorian. Because of how you responded when I brought it up; you seemed unusually startled about me asking. So I asked Dorian, and then he and Cado had a bit of a fight that I wasn’t exactly privy to, and then Dorian told Cado not to talk to me about Sheikah matters. And he included you in that. And so I assumed I had my answer. With the look you’re giving me, though, perhaps not,” Pikango says almost nervously. “I’m genuinely sorry for any trouble.”

Link waves him off, ignoring the continued apologies. He isn’t upset with Pikango, persay, more just confused by the whole situation. There’s something being implied here that he doesn’t fully understand. 

So instead of going to sleep, like he’d planned, Link goes to Impa. 

She has on her Elder face, the severe one, no real humor to be seen in it. Link tries to leave out Pikango and Dorian and Cado and Paya, but Impa is far from dense and is probably filling in all those gaps on her own as Link gives a brief anxious explanation. He just wants to know, he tells her, if there’s something important he’s missing. He tries not to make it seem like an accusation. It isn’t one. Link isn’t even sure why he cares about knowing, except that his endless curiosity about the world turns on things it probably shouldn’t, and tends to fixate there until the need to know is satisfied. He tells her he’s heard rumors of the village closing to outsiders, and that he knows he is an outsider, and tries to frame it as asking how that will affect his quest. 

Under Impa’s hard eyes he feels guilty even bringing it up. It’s a selfish concern, and a largely nonsensical one. He only has one memory left to find, and then he won’t have real reason to be here anyway. But if it involves him, he wants to know. 

To Link’s surprise, Impa doesn’t really seem angry. Not the kind of angry he might’ve expected, the cold sharpness that he fears from her. Instead she seems thoughtful and calm. When he looks up, her eyes have even softened. 

“You know, Champion,” she begins at a near-whisper, “That you could always find your way here?”

Link doesn’t know. 

“Before the Calamity… and after. You will always be able to find your way to Kakariko. Our ways of keeping unwanted visitors away do not apply to you.”

_ Why?  _ Link asks, trying to keep his hands and expression steady at the same time. 

“You have been welcome here for over a hundred years,” Impa says slowly, calmly. “Nothing has changed that.”

Link hesitates for a long moment, unsure of Impa’s mood and not wanting to anger her, then asks her why again. He feels like a child. 

“Tell me, Champion -- I know you do not remember this place, or me, or any Sheikah. But nonetheless tell me -- do you know why you can find Kakariko, without guidance and without difficulty?” Impa asks, and then waits patiently as Link tries to formulate his thoughts. 

_ I don’t know _ , he finally answers.  _ I don’t.  _

“It is not, in fact, because you have Sheikah blood, as that fool of a painter may be wont to say.”

Link looks up at that. He isn’t surprised, as he hadn’t ever really thought so, but it’s different to hear it from Impa. 

“It is not a matter of blood. Blood does not water the soil in the same way as sweat does,” she murmurs, seemingly looking right through him, “And tears.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Link can hear Paya moving upstairs, and one of the guards chatting with someone outside. 

“You spent much time here,” Impa tells Link finally, “Training to become the Hero of Hyrule, as the Hylian military took both too litlle interest, and too much. You came here at twelve years of age. You left at fourteen.”

Link just stares at her. 

“It is not my intention to withhold from you information about your own life. It is my hope that one day you may remember these things… Of course I would hope that one day you shall remember… that I, Impa, was the one who taught you the Sheikah ways of combat, Link. As a servant to the Hylian royal family, as the daughter of the Sheikah general of the Hylian army, I was tasked with teaching you, and doing it well. Perhaps this is another way that we failed you. But I taught you as well as I knew how, in that time.”

Link’s hands are shaking; he clenches them to quell the restlessness. It can’t be true. But then again it can, and Link doesn’t have a way of knowing. 

“Your father was Captain of the Hylian Royal Guard, and you had no known mother. Perhaps it is true that you did have some Sheikah blood, as we Sheikah were not so secluded in those days. But your father never did speak of your mother. I am sorry, Link, that I do not know her. I know that you were entrusted as an infant to your father’s sister and raised with her children, until her husband decided otherwise, and then you lived with your father in Hyrule Castle. And within a year you had pulled that Sword. Then, you came to us. 

“You were a strange child, both skittish and fearless in turns. You were strong for your age, but too slight. I still am not sure how my mother, the General, convinced the King of Hyrule to allow you to train with us and not with the Hylian Guard, but I was convinced it was the only way, and my mother trusted me with charge of your training. You took to Sheikah forms well. With us you learned to be soundless, to be quick, to be clever. We taught you to fight with the speed of your feet and mind more than the strength of your arm. It seemed best. 

“And when those two years were done, when the time had been stretched for as long as it could have been, you were recalled to the Castle to finish training under your father and his men. Though, by that point already, you were unsurpassed. You had taken to the Master Sword as it had taken to you, and when you held it, no man could defeat you. And from that time, your years with us were forgotten.”

Link doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t think there is anything to say. He still doesn’t remember her any better than he remembers the Castle or his own father or his own thoughts back then. The story doesn’t make his past self seem like any less of a pure fighting machine, mindless and emotionless, like in all the memories he’s recovered. He wonders if Impa knew a different Link. He’s always figured she is disappointed in him now, in his carelessness and lack of control, lack of stoicism. He wonders. 

“As I’d have told you then,” Impa says suddenly, startling him, “Dwelling on possibilities does not change reality. Hopeless as that may seem, there are scenarios in which it is not. Go to sleep. I will be here tomorrow if you need to talk again.”

Link recognizes that the conversation is over, and just can’t tell how he feels about it. There’s a persistent numbness in his chest that makes him climb through the window of the inn rather than face Pikango, and lie sleepless on the bed, staring at the ceiling. 

He understands why Impa wouldn’t have told him, why she hasn’t told him much of anything. He hasn’t asked, either, because usually he doesn’t want to know. 

It almost eases Link's odd guilt in a way, to consider that he likely never really knew his mother and wouldn't remember her regardless of the Shrine. He doesn't care to know more of his father. And Impa is still alive, and some Zora who knew him, and maybe being remembered isn't so much of a curse as it often seems. Maybe being told about his own past doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would. 

Link hopes Kakariko will stay open. Hard as it was being here at first due to the pressure -- hard as it still is sometimes -- there's a piece of himself to be found here, same as everywhere else in Hyrule. Even if Link would still be welcome, Pikango might not. 

Link resolves to get a better grip on the Yiga situation, to try and help ease the burden on Kakariko; they've been generous to him in their own ways, and it's another debt he owes. He doesn't mind though, really. He considers the speed of Yiga movement and how he has to match it, and wonders if that somehow was trained into him by Impa, and if she in a way is another of the thousand things his body remembers even when his mind hasn't. 

It's not reassuring but it isn't upsetting either. 

Link can hear Pikango snore through the thin walls, and turns over to pull the blanket over his head. Wonders what the man knows. What anybody knows that they haven't told Link, because it isn't necessary right now. 

There'll be time for that though, he supposes. He just needs to make sure of it. The Princess is waiting, after all. And there's probably a lot she wants to say. 


	14. food

“You’re supposed to eat it,” Yunobo says politely. Link stares down at his plate, which alone is much larger than his head, and at the thing sitting on it. He still isn’t sure. 

“I guess your mouth is a bit smaller than a Goron’s… Want me to break it up for you? We do it for the kids sometimes, goro. If that’s not demeaning. I don’t mean to insult you! I’m sure you can eat it like it is, just fine, goro.”

Link knows he could break it up himself just fine. He just isn’t so sure about the eating part, regardless of the size of the pieces. 

The Goron brothers at Gut Check Rock had led him here, really, by telling him that despite how strong he is for being so scrawny, he still needs to fuel himself properly. Like a Goron. He’d been half curious and half suspicious, having a decent idea of the usual Goron diet, but he’d gone and mentioned it to Yunobo nonetheless, mostly expecting the other to laugh. 

“Oh, yes,” Yunobo had said very seriously. “I know you’re really strong, you didn’t even have any trouble with Rudania, but I know you’re headed to face worse things, goro. And that calls for good fuel. Can’t grow strong without it, goro. Not that you need to. But imagine how much stronger you’ll be, goro, after a proper Goron breakfast.”

That’s how Link got himself into this position, sitting in Yunobo’s floor and staring down at an enormous prime rock roast and questioning the strength of his own Hylian teeth. And his stomach, though he’s a little less worried about that with all the monster parts he’s consumed. His stomach hasn’t failed him yet. 

His teeth, though, he isn't sure about. He's already missing one from an unfortunate situation with a moblin carrying a very large club and Link still having been half asleep. That was only a month ago, and Link isn't sure he can afford to lose more teeth just yet. He generally likes food too much. 

He looks up at Yunobo almost pleadingly. The Goron crosses his arms in an unusual display of stubbornness. 

"I won't eat till you do, goro."

Betrayal. 

"What's this fuss about?" a voice rumbles from the doorway, Bludo looking as cranky as ever and staring intently at the rock roast. 

"Link doesn't want to eat, goro. Tell him he needs the strength, Boss!" Yunobo has the courage to say. More betrayal. 

"What?! With prime roast like that? Ach… that's a crime -- the youth really do have no respect for anything anymore…"

Link pales under Bludo's glare. Even more so when the Boss comes and sits right next to him, bad back popping ominously. The old Goron makes intent eye contact. 

"Didn't see you as a coward, little Hylian," he says with an unwavering squint. "’Bout time for you to go at some proper food. I know Aji grilled this roast extra special for ya. Eat!”  
The rock roast in question stares up at Link, all hard edges and burning red seams that’ve cooled some, at least, since he’s sat in front of it. 

Bludo gives a warning growl. Yunobo just beams. 

It doesn’t go well. 

Link does not, at least, lose another tooth. He may’ve chipped a couple, and he burnt his tongue beyond belief -- thankfully not beyond the power of a healing elixir to fix, at least -- but his teeth remain relatively firmly in his skull. 

His stomach is the one that ends up betraying him. 

Yunobo’s floor is as good a place as any to spend a few hours, Link decides, when you’re absolutely green and constantly at risk of expelling more of what Bludo, disturbed, calls “strange Hylian liquid,” which was in fact burning hot vomit. The Boss lost interest quite quickly, maybe feeling a bit of guilt or maybe just disgusted. He wandered out mumbling about the strength of a Goron maybe not being for everyone. 

Yunobo, though, hovers. He fetches water and even plops an uncut sapphire in it to try and make it a more palatable temperature for fragile Hylians. He wrings his hands, apologizes a few times, and claims that Link shouldn’t worry about the mess in the floor even if the Goron is clearly unnerved by it. Link ends up sleeping there once the worst of it is over. 

It’s in the morning, when Link feels a little better but not quite good enough to leave, that Yunobo remembers there was something he’d meant to give him. 

Daruk’s Training Journal, or so the sloppy label on the front declares, is a nondescript little thing. Just large enough for Goron hands but probably still much too small for Daruk’s. Link has already had the privilege of being shown Mipha’s and even Revali’s, but he had no idea Daruk would have a journal too, of sorts. He makes a note to consider asking about Urbosa’s. It feels oddly personal, but when Link has so little else left of them -- not even memories, not really -- he hopes they wouldn’t mind. 

Daruk’s isn’t particularly enlightening. It fits what Link knows of the friendly Goron, and it makes him smile to think about. Then he sees it. 

_That little Hylian from before is named Link. He's got a respectable appetite. Loves to eat meat, fruit, vegetables... all sorts of things a decent person wouldn't dream of eating. Link will cook up and eat just about anything. I offered him some Grade A rock roast to help refine his palette. I asked him how it tasted. He liked it so much, he was speechless. I knew Hylians could eat rocks too._

Either the Link of a hundred years ago had an immensely stronger constitution -- and he wouldn’t be surprised, though he doubts it, considering the kinds of things he eats these days -- or he was a lot more polite, and Daruk a lot more oblivious. 

As Yunobo wanders back in from whatever he’s been doing and aims another barrage of concerned questions at Link, it’s obvious how the two Gorons are different and how much has changed. But, then again, at least it’s a bit reassuring that despite the hundred years Link is still just as stupid. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew i wrote one this morning and drafted it, read it later and hated it. started over. so here we are now at ten pm with this instead LMAO


	15. animal

Link returns to Tarrey Town a lot, once it's complete. Of course he did during it's construction, but only for a few moments at a time to deliver wood and promise yet again to spread the word and seek inhabitants. 

Moggs and Monari are inhabitants which Link didn't find. If they told him how they came to live there, he hardly remembers it. They're a fixture now, same as everyone else, and Monari in particular always has interesting gossip and culinary talk to share, and Link gravitates to her for a chat every time he returns for arrows. 

Whenever Link appears in Tarrey Town, usually gliding down from the shrine across the lake, someone's always around to wave or call out a greeting. Usually it's Fyson, knowing Link will probably make a beeline to him anyway with things to sell and rupees to spend. It's more often than ever these days that Link comes here to trade. He's stocking up, trying to make final preparations. There isn't much time left. Tarrey Town is as good a place as any to go. It's second only to the Gerudo markets Link which also frequents. He's always impressed with Fyson's supply in comparison, considering he's a single Rito without much of a network. 

Sometimes it isn't Fyson who greets Link first, though. It's often Moggs or Monari, who spend much of their days outside in the sunshine wandering the town center. 

"Hello," Monari calls out cheerfully. Her reedy voice echoes through the cold morning air, cutting easily through the damp and the semi-darkness. 

Link lands somewhat gracefully and waves as soon as the paraglider is out of his hands. 

"Fine morning, isn't it?" Monari says, as she nearly always does. "Little wet, but eh, lets the flowers bloom, doesn't it?"

Link automatically follows as she continues her slow route. 

"If you're not too busy, come have a cup of tea with me before you go. My husband is helping poor Kapson at the inn, has been for two nights now -- wouldn't you know, there's been such a rush of travellers… everyone's so busy lately -- why, I've even been commissioned to cook now and then. There is," she says conspiratorially, "a bit of wildberry pie left, just enough for two I believe."

Link can't exactly say no to that. 

When the sun finally finishes creating the horizon, haloed in clouds, Link and Monari are sitting on the old couple's doorstep with empty plates and half-drunk cups of tea, watching the town slowly come to life. 

Fyson predictably emerges from his house first, as can be expected of a Rito, albeit disheveled and clearly still half-asleep. He waves and mumbles some kind of greeting inaudible over the distance, and starts slowly putting out his wares. 

Some sleepy traveller staggers out of the inn next, wandering over to where her horse is tied and muttering to it while she ties her saddlebags back on. She shivers a little in the cool morning air, and curses while she digs out a warm doublet. 

It's quiet for a bit after that, as the woman goes on her way and Fyson dozes at his table. Link watches the wind blow leaves off the trees, cascading down like snow all across the square. Weak rays of sunlight hit everything at an angle that only emphasizes the dimness. The wind is the only sound. 

Right when Rhondson comes out her front door, strolling slowly into the pale sunlight and looking more awake than anyone so far, with a steaming cup in hand -- perhaps the strong Gerudo coffee she always has -- Monari turns to Link. 

"Ah, I'd completely forgotten. Would you like to see something?" 

Curious, he nods. 

Whatever it is that Monari has to show him, it's in her house and up the stairs, somewhere he hasn't been. It's the same as any other Bolson Construction house, really, but it feels perfectly alive and comfortable despite the blockiness of the structure. 

Upstairs, right next to a window, there is a large shape covered by a worn blanket.

Monari removes it gently, folding it and setting it aside. 

"Meet Tama and Kopeeki. They're red sparrows," she explains softly. "My mother used to keep golden ones, but those could never be happy in this cold."

Link leans in close to see. The cage itself is simple but fairly large, tarnished but clean. The sparrows ruffle their feathers. They look very well-fed, and their feathers are brilliantly colored in the morning light. One of them chirps.

Link looks back up at Monari, questioning. 

"My mother always, always kept songbirds," she says quietly. "I guess Moggs talked about it with that boy Grante, and some friend of a friend of his brought these from Hebra a few weeks ago. I asked him where they'd come from, and he told me the places where he thought they'd been found -- little Kopeeki has a broken leg, see, where he'd fallen out of a nest. Those are their names, the places they came from, though I suppose you'd likely know better than I if it's true -- I've travelled some in my life, but never to the west."

One of the birds -- Tama, maybe -- hops from one perch to another, its inquisitive little face coming right to the cage. It chirps again, insistent. 

"But I've already fed you!" Monari laughs. "Look, your food is right down there, Tama dear." She turns to Link again, smile fading a little, but fondness still in her eyes. 

"My grandmother kept birds too, and her mother before that. They say, you know, that even in the Age of Burning Fields, though I was too young to remember it, that you would still see songbirds. They say that even on the morning after the Calamity there were birds singing in the trees."

Link considers that. He would've been in the Shrine then, by that morning, and the Princess would be heading to the castle or already within it. He pictures a near-total stillness, the land covered in fallen trees and burnt patches and dead grass slick with rain, all littered with frozen Guardians, all scarred and stained with blood. 

Link wonders if it was cold that morning. In his memory, running away with Zelda and falling to those Guardians, he thinks it was cold. 

It could've been a morning just like this, he thinks. The sunlight could've made the same pale stripes across everything. The rain could've washed away some of the blood and left everything clean, despite it all. 

Tama chirps again, this time more of a little trill, and hops away to land at the top of the cage, right by the window and keep making that trilling sound. Kopeeki sings back, looking sleepy down on his perch. Link's heard the same sound a thousand times in the wild and never given it much thought. He's seen the same birds, probably has a picture of them on the Slate somewhere. 

He pictures these little birds sitting in the trees that survived the Calamity, or on the skeletons of the ones that didn't, singing through the end of the world. And it didn't end, after all, because Monari is here next to Link telling him about her songbirds and her mother. 

"They're a bit of a sign of hope," she offers softly, "At least to my family. I freed some of my mother's once, as a child, because I hated seeing them in a cage. She cried as they flew away. But one of them didn't go. 

"He was one that my mother had found once with a broken wing, and she'd saved him, and he only knew her and his warm, safe aviary, that my father had made. So he stayed, and my mother wasn't really angry with me anyway. She loved her birds. She wanted them to be free, too. But she wasn't free either. I think she hoped that one day all of us would be."

Kopeeki joins Tama up at the top of the cage, both trilling back and forth, in little intervals. 

"Thanks," Link says very quietly, very roughly. He's glad Monari wanted to show him her sparrows. They're a sign of hope for her, and maybe she wants him to have that too, or just for someone to know and remember. Either way, Link will remember. 

She just smiles. 

Link doesn't stay very long. He says goodbye after the tea is finished, makes his usual rounds fairly quickly, and goes on his way, a part of his mind still on those little birds. 

Two weeks later, staring up at the castle and feeling dread settle in his heart, Monari and Tarrey Town are the furthest thing from Link's mind. 

It's a dismal morning. The predawn sky is still black, and it started to rain a few hours ago while Link worked his way past Guardians. It feels too familiar and grim for comfort.

Link has everything he theoretically needs to face Ganon. He spent weeks making sure he'd been to all the shrines, filling his inventory with elixirs and strong shields and weapons and plenty of arrows, and completing as many tasks as he possibly could. He's said his goodbyes, in his own way. Everything is ready and there is no more time. 

The castle is every bit as imposing as the other times Link has visited it, made worse by the darkness and the weather and the memories. It's quiet here at the base of the wall, with all the nearby Guardians defeated and in ruins. 

It won't be quiet when he gets inside. 

Link changes into his climbing gear right there in order to combat the rain and the slick stone, shivering in the dark, keeping one eye on his surroundings and leaving on the chest piece of the ancient armor in order to be prepared for whatever he finds at the top. 

He's ready. But he isn't. 

Cursing and struggling while he jams his fingers in every crack of the stone, fighting not to slip, Link thinks vaguely that he'll never be ready, not really, and that he's known that all along, but he's here anyway nonetheless and there's no going back. It's grim. 

When he finally flings himself over the edge, it's after ten solid minutes of work. Some of the uncertainty faded with the effort. Link's body takes over from his mind in times like these, when he's lucky. And he is lucky, and there are no active Guardians targeting him, though he sees some he'll have to pass. 

Looking intently at a turret, trying to work out what its line of sight entails, Link realizes suddenly that it's silhouetted against a sky that's changed during the short time it took for him to scale the wall. The sun has half-risen. It's another grey morning, dim and pale and cold. The rain hasn't let up, either. 

But it's no longer pure darkness, and the sun promises at least a little warmth, and while Link crouches there distractedly checking for Skywatchers, a distinctive noise comes from somewhere not too far away. 

That little short trill that Tama and Kopeeki made, the one that Link has heard all over Hyrule, even in the most dangerous places, that little trill reaches his ears from somewhere here at the castle, intermittent and soft. 

It's just one; there's no answer, no second song intertwining with the first. 

But it's there. One sparrow is perched somewhere here around the walls of the castle, chirping into the semi-darkness, heedless of the Guardians and the evil contained inside. 

Link remembers Monari calling them a bit of a sign of hope, a little piece of normalcy that persisted even the very day after the Calamity struck, when everything would've been already in ruins, and persisting -- even thriving -- through the long, hard hundred years after.

If they're a sign of hope, Link figures he'll take it. Maybe that's the thing he's missing, and even if it isn't, it's still a good thing to find, especially in the darkest places. 

Link hopes that once he finishes his business here, that all of them will indeed, as Monari's mother had hoped, be free. 

The sparrow sings on into the cold morning, unperturbed by anything, and Link goes on his way. 


	16. magic

Link never thinks of the Slate as magic. All of the Sheikah technology, to him, is purely that, and he doesn’t have to fully understand it in order to categorize it as something other than magic. Based off his memories, he imagines that’s something Zelda might’ve drilled into him. Or maybe it’s Robbie and Purah’s approaches to their work that make him feel like it’s just science done in a way that Link has no hope of understanding, real tangible principles worked so intricately that they become nearly magical on completion. Link really doesn’t know. But he doesn’t consider it to be magic. 

That’s not to say Link doesn’t believe in magic; he witnesses it perhaps more often than anyone else in Hyrule, in all the strangest places and in the most obscure ways. 

Primarily there is elemental magic, which in the end is used like science, and is universally acknowledged to barely be magic at all. Certain natural materials have certain properties, which can be obtained and used to an end. Sapphires carry heat resistance. When ground fine and manipulated by a skilled Zora craftsman, they can be used in the heads of ice arrows, that elemental power contained and compressed to be discharged violently upon impact. A Gerudo jeweler like Isha can set them in fine Zora silver, cut and changed by whatever strange methods she employs in the back of her shop, and turn them into jewelry that protects the weather from harsh desert temperatures. 

Elixirs exploit the natural properties of small creatures and combine them with whatever residual magic that stays in monster bones after their vessels are destroyed. Link was initially alarmed by that, but he can’t sense any Malice around those horns and teeth, and the resulting concoctions are endlessly useful. They’re used by almost all of the races of Hyrule. If there’s any evil in bokoblin teeth and Lynel horns and leathery keese wings, it seems that the process of cooking nulls it somehow. Link figures that maybe since the creatures all come back to life anyway, these little parts they shed are just that, just parts of their physical forms that have practically nothing to do with their souls and their connection to Ganon. 

The natural magic in different materials might not even be magic. It probably isn’t, really, or at least not entirely; whatever makes a topaz resistant to electricity could have easily been a well-known scientific fact once, and the knowledge of it lost over the years. That’s plausible, and debatable. 

Other types of magic aren’t debatable. Whatever keeps travellers out of the Lost Woods, be it some power excercised by the Deku Tree or just some strange trait of the forest itself, is definitely magic. 

It isn’t malignant. Even to those it chooses to repel, there’s no evil intent. It feels to Link like a natural magic too, something that has probably always existed in some form or another, a way of nature protecting itself. The Koroks hide themselves from people with a magic that feels much the same. 

It’s different, but only slightly, from the wind that Link can feel when a dragon is approaching -- that odd insistent call that it seems only he can hear, a cool wind or warm breath or crackle of electricity against his skin -- and the dragons, otherworldly and strangely powerful as they are, are natural too. They may be ethereal, they may have some deeper powers not of this world, but they still attune to elements and stick to their winding routes across Hyrule. There’s no evil in them, and maybe no good either. Not in a human sense. In that way, they carry that same natural magic as everything else. 

The only strong magic that Link can really think of is that of the Calamity, which returns life to dead monsters and thickens the air at every Blood Moon. The smallest pool of bubbling Malice is capable of burning flesh down to the bone, not with heat, but with magic. There’s no other word to describe it. 

Link hates the feel of that magic, the influence that fills the Guardians and controls the Divine Beasts. He hates the heaviness of the air every Blood Moon, the oily stench, the stillness and the suffocating ash. Hates the way it makes him feel like burning, makes him remember what it feels like to die of burning, even when his skin remains unmarred under that red glow. Even when the feeling passes and doesn’t return until the next time. Link hates it. 

There’s also Zelda’s power, which Link has to think of as magic, because he doesn’t understand the Goddess. If the power of the Calamity is magic, then so must that of the Goddess be. Link can feel that on Blood Moons too, a light brush against his mind when Zelda speaks to him. He feels it at Goddess Statues and when the Master Sword starts to glow. 

Link is sure he knows what magic feels like. He may not know what it is, but there is no mistaking the feeling that always comes with it in one way or another, especially with such things as the Calamity. 

That is magic, and the Sheikah technology isn’t. Not in Link’s mind. Even the Guardians aren’t magic, despite probably being controlled by it. 

Not only does Link know there’s a difference, can feel the difference, but he also just doesn’t like for the two to be compared. It feels like disrespect to the Sheikah who somehow developed these incredible things. He thinks Zelda would hate it. She worked hard to learn about technology, and that same kind of academic learning failed her in mastering her power. There’s a stark difference. 

Link accepts that there’s surely some overlap. He knows that the Sheikah have their own arts, which seem to align with natural magic, and knows that it’s unlikely that technology such as the Slate would be entirely possible without some manipulation of magic. He knows that when he warps he’s taken apart and transported and put back together, and doesn’t think that that can be done from nothing. That power has to be drawn from somewhere, and maybe that’s something that could be called magic. He doesn’t understand well enough to know and generally feels better not having to think about it. 

But it irks him nonetheless, for the Slate to be called magic. 

Everyone in Hyrule does it. Everyone Link’s traded with or fought in front of. Everyone who’s seen him draw anything from the Slate or place anything into it, they all go wide-eyed and remark on the magic of that strange device. He’s careful not to teleport or use any runes when people are directly looking, or even view the map, but it doesn’t matter. The inventory alone is enough. 

It’s not that it puts people off. They’re never particularly afraid or suspicious. Rarely do they act jealous, as everyone -- any kind of traveller, at least -- seems to accept that if you’re brave enough to venture into dangerous places, then there are interesting and valuable things to be found. That’s a fact of life in Hyrule. It’s generally known that Link travels odd places and does so with strange speed. He’s used to being questioned in regards to that, and he’s used to it being laughed off when he doesn’t answer. No one cares, really. No one pries too hard. Any oddity can be accepted by the average traveller as long as it can give a laugh, and Link’s usually good for that. 

Even the Slate itself isn’t really questioned. Link almost wishes it were, even if he couldn’t give any proper answer. Merchants always look awed, and sometimes they comment on the genius of it, and if so then they always call it magic. Sometimes they say nothing but they have that same look in their eyes. It shouldn’t annoy him, Link decides over and over again. It doesn’t matter, and it’s best if no one does know what it is. It’s already good enough that no one looks at it and makes any connection to Guardians, or if they do, then they probably see it in terms of the price of scavenged parts. That’s enough. 

Link refuses to look at his own personal aversion to magic. That’s irrelevant to anything and he can easily deny it, especially considering that most magic he experiences isn’t something commonly witnessed by anyone else. 

He doesn’t have to explain his strange sadness and uneasiness in the Lost Woods to anyone, because anyone else would not be able to have entered, and wouldn’t have even tried due to superstition. The Blood Moons are a reasonable source of fear to everyone. Zelda’s magic, to anyone else, would probably be a source of relief. No one else would associate a memory of it with their own death, and with waking up to that golden power carrying a stranger’s voice into their empty head, cutting across silence and darkness and humming wires. 

The Champions’ gifts are the only not-purely-natural magic Link doesn’t have an aversion to, and that’s because he can feel the almost-living brush of a soul alongside his when he uses one. Those are his to command and its his energy they consume, but they didn’t come from him. He trusts the Champions completely even in death. Their powers don’t feel like magic, exactly, and they don’t leave the taste of blood in his mouth. 

When Beedle makes his hundredth awed comment about the incredible magic power of the Slate, Link feels something like Urbosa’s soul alongside his for half a second, as though offering Link to vent his pointless ire with some well-placed lightning. It’s almost funny even as he declines the offer. It’s grounding. 

Link shrugs at Beedle, like he always does, like he’s aware of the so-called magic of the Slate too and is just no longer impressed by it. And that’s true to some degree. It’s fine. 

If the Slate has to be magic, Link hopes it’s like the magic of the Champions. It’s certainly aided him, and continues to. He knows it's the same type of technology that built the Guardians and the shrines and the Divine Beasts and even the Shrine of Resurrection, and his feelings on all of those are mixed. He wants to see it as something separate from magic, something that can be concretely explained, that if he wanted to learn, maybe he could come to understand. 

Link waves bye to Beedle, watching the other's eyes follow the Slate as Link walks away -- more longing than jealous, and Link knows Beedle well enough to know that -- but it still stings slightly. Makes him want to hide the thing like he used to before he knew what kind of reactions to expect from people. 

He wants to show someone the pictures on it, not to put them in awe of the magic but to share some of the things he's seen. He wants people to understand the technology for what it is, and for what he wants it to be. 

Zelda, he thinks, will understand. She'll probably want the thing back, and he'll have to accept that, but she will see it as a technological puzzle again, how Link wants to see it, and that will be fine. 

Or so he hopes. Maybe her view will have changed since she unlocked her own power. Somehow Link doesn't think so, but maybe. 

It feels like a lonely thing, feeling magic in Hyrule that no one else seems to be able to feel, but having other people think that the one thing Link doesn't want to involve magic is exactly that. If he could let others use it, if he could explain it… Well, they'd probably still see it as they do now, and they still wouldn't see Koroks and dragons, and nothing would be different, and Link would still be lonely. 

He hopes it isn't always like that. There's no knowing what will happen After, once everything's done. Technology could become a well known and trusted convention again, instead of or alongside magic. Preferably alongside, Link decides eventually, thinking of elemental arrows and elixirs. 

Whatever power fuels the Sheikah technology, maybe it can be used for other things one day. Maybe Robbie can move on from weapons and focus instead on things that could move people and good across the land, like Guardian stalkers with no lasers, and the craftsmen who make elemental arrows can make jewelry like Isha to aid travellers in crossing the mountains and deserts. 

Zelda will know, Link tells himself. That's right up her alley as far as he knows. All he has to do is clear the way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> started writing it, had a breakdown. Bon Appetit
> 
> (again... wrote something else in the morning, deleted that, & did this equally dissatisfying thing late at night instead. will go back & proofread it in the morning if I can face myself. tomorrow's may also be a bit lackluster, but I have more concrete ideas for the rest of the prompts after that)


	17. temple

The sun doesn’t reach back here. These shadows are cold and unforgiving. It’s enough to make Link shiver as he turns over stones, on the hunt for any Korok he’s missed. He thinks he senses another here somewhere, and wants to find it before he goes. But he also just wants to leave. 

It’s bound to be colder down here. Link knows he’s firmly underground, and what light manages to breach the entrance can’t quite make it past all the broken pillars and collapsed levels to reach the back. The Goddess statue has its own kind of light, but only when Link looks at it through the corners of his eyes. When he looks directly at it, it’s silent dark stone, tall and imposing. The light of the Goddess statues isn’t one that can illuminate anything else. 

Link turned away from this place about a dozen times after he found it. The first glance inside proved to him that no, this was not something he was ready for. And every time he returned he felt the same. It turned into a hope that once he got a handle on defeating Guardians, it’d be a good place to gather ancient materials for Robbie, but that idea just never materialized. Not once he took more than a few steps in and turned right back around. 

The place itself is incredibly enticing, and always has been. Whether looking down on it from above or coming right up to the front, it’s immense depths are maddeningly tempting. Link knew there would be secrets in here, and treasure, and that those things never come without danger. And at least the Guardians are stationary and not crawling all around the walls. For months, Link just kept telling himself he’d come when he was ready, when he’d finally perfected a shield parry for the lasers, as soon as it was accurate enough to rely on. 

That day came, more or less, in Akkala weeks ago. It’d probably come sooner but Link hadn’t realized it. It was when he defeated those two Guardians in the field below Tarrey Town for what felt like the thousandth time, and it was easy, and Link himself considered it easy. Killing Guardians could be easy now. Not mindless, but with minimal risk. Same as Link’s method for taking on Lynels. He’d go in with a plan and be prepared for a long fight, and he’d be patient, but he’d take every opportunity to end it quickly. And a good shield parry became vital, and so he perfected it. 

It still wasn’t enough. Link came here again not too long after, and turned away again. This time he didn’t have any reason or excuse. He just didn’t want to venture underground with all of those Guardians, and it had to come sheerly from his own cowardice. 

This time, Link was just passing by with no intention to stop. He was on his way back from Tabantha late in the evening, taking the road that curves around the edge of the valley. He’d stopped, gotten off his horse, and just paraglided down. There was no real thought process. The wind had carried him to the middle of the roof, where he picked his way across to stand above the entrance. Still unthinking, Link descended. Scared off the wolves around the entrance with a few whacks from the flat of his blade. Stared blankly up at the imposing stone.

Link’s first and only real thought was to enter in the morning, when he knew there would be some good light, at least for the entrance area. Beyond that he hadn’t been, and hadn’t been able to see. There was no telling what awaited inside.

Link didn’t dwell on it, just made a fire and sat there till morning on the cold dirt with one eye fixed on the structure as though something could come out of it at any time. 

At the first rays of sunlight, Link had stood and shaken off his stiffness. He put on the ancient armor and pulled out the ancient bow, which he was afraid was close to breaking, but he wasn’t prepared for this venture really or he would’ve gone and asked Robbie about it, little as he liked seeing the man. 

Revali’s bow rested in the Slate with a handful of others and plenty of bomb arrows. Eight ancient arrows felt like hardly enough, but Link refused to think about it, or anything else. He’d make his way through the stupid structure just like always, mindlessly and relying on instinct, and it would all be fine. 

In the end, it is fine. Link made it through, even with some clumsy maneuvering. He killed every last Guardian. Some of them he had to double back to after he’d already passed, sneaking around their lines of sight and climbing up to reach them with the Master Sword. He only used three ancient arrows, and managed a good shield parry twice. A bit of burnt-off hair and a singed side are all the injuries he got from the whole mess, and Link considers that a success. The rest of the trip, though, Guardian parts aside, doesn’t feel like such a success. Link isn’t sure why. 

The Goddess statue feels like it’s watching as Link searches the place, rummaging through endless debris in hopes of finding something useful, something that could explain why this structure exists and what it was for. It can’t be for one shrine. 

Link moves aside another heap of debris. Some of the pieces of rock are almost too heavy to lift, but they aren't even the kind Koroks like to hide under. Link just moves them anyway for something to do. 

There's just something  _ wrong  _ about this place. Link can't help but feel like there should be something more here. Its massive inside -- larger than the Temple of Time, he thinks, and rivalling parts of the castle. It's obvious from what little is left intact of the original stonework that this place would've been grand in its day, and Link has no idea when that day would've been. It definitely seems abandoned for longer than a hundred years, but then again, there's no explanation for all the Guardians inside of it either. 

Usually Link can shrug off mysteries as something that maybe he knew before and had forgotten about; this feels almost like that, but not quite. This feels like an important place. It has its own little mark on the map on the Slate, same as settlements do, but there's just not enough here to be able to understand it. 

Link wants to ask someone -- maybe Impa would know, or maybe someone at a stable. Perhaps even the Rito might have knowledge of this place. Surely someone's flown over the top of it or seen it down here from the road, even if hardly anyone passes through Tanagar Canyon. It's just too large and too strange to ignore, but there's nothing,  _ nothing _ to explain what this place once was, and why it is the way it is now.

It must be ancient. It has to be. Whether it was fully underground at some point or fully aboveground, nothing explains it's half-sunkenness, it's station here at the end of a long forsaken canyon, a hard journey for anyone who comes directly through there. 

There should be something here. Link just can't find it. 

There aren't any more Koroks. He comes to terms with that, sort of. It'd be better if there were, but after his tenth pass around the walls with the Korok mask on and not so much as a rattle, he has to accept it. A hidden Korok isn't going to appear and explain anything, least of all this odd feeling of wrongness. 

The Goddess statue stays silent and dark, but Link knows he could speak to it same as any other if he only had the Spirit Orbs to do so. He can't think of why he would, as he's never gone back to the one in the Temple of Time because of the same attributes this one has -- its massive, it has that odd glow out of the corners of Link's eyes that casts no shadow and lends no light, and Link feels as though it's watching in a way the small ones of the villages don't or can't. It seems closer to an image of the Goddess herself, whatever that could mean. It seems as though a part of her is really in it, even if he knows she would still only offer him the same few repetitive words. 

Link doesn't stay too much longer in the Forgotten Temple. He stares at the name on the Slate for a while before going to warp away, wondering if it's a place forgotten by him or by time itself, wondering if any version of himself ever knew what transpired here to make it feel like a place of such importance. 

Ultimately it can't be so different from all the other things he's forgotten, but for once Link combs his mind over and over again, trying to coax something back. Nothing, of course, comes. 

It's almost evening when he finally leaves the Temple. He feels like he's lost something but can't even name what it was. 

Link's horse waits right where he left her, giving him a baleful look, and he apologizes with half a dozen apples, one eye still on the roof of the structure below. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yep, I know this isn't exactly the intended meaning of the prompt (dungeon/temple) but I straight up didn't want to write about any of the botw 'dungeons' rn so i just went this way instead for some reason


	18. boss

Link can’t feel his toes. He hasn’t been able to in a while, and it hasn’t mattered, and it continues to not matter in the context of all the things he can’t feel. The Sheikah stealth clothes don’t provide anywhere close to enough warmth to stand up to the frigid nights of the Gerudo Highlands. Snow is nearly knee-deep in places. Link runs on top of it when possible, when he can distribute his weight well enough and move fast enough, and he flounders through it otherwise. He loses track of all the monsters he passes. A Lizalfos could outrun him on any other night, especially in this snow, but not tonight. 

_ Riju, _ he thinks desperately, blankly.  _ Riju. Have to go back to Riju.  _

But if he really wanted to return to Gerudo Town he’d just warp to the shrine outside the walls, and instead he’s flying though the Highlands in the dead of night, searching for a good place to jump and paraglide all the way down to the desert sand. 

_ Riju, _ he repeats again and again. Sometimes  _ Urbosa.  _ Sometimes just  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry _ , over and over until his brain turns to static when he dodges another Lizalfo. 

Link doesn’t even check the map on the Slate to know if he’s headed in the right direction. At this pace he’ll be somewhere out of the Highlands by dawn if he’s lucky, regardless of the way he’s headed, and that’s enough. Then once he’s more reasonable he can go back to the desert. He just has to get away and keep moving and keep not thinking, letting his toes stay numb and letting the dread in his chest languish in that same awful tingling numbness. It’s better this way. And when the sun comes up he’ll be able to convince himself of it. And forget. And move on. 

The cliff, when it comes, is unexpected. If not for Link’s momentum he’d just slip on the icy edge and tumble straight down to where Mipha would wait, and maybe that’d be better, but he doesn’t. The momentum carries him a few feet outward into the air, and it’s enough for his muscles to remember the paraglider and how to use it, and then he’s flying over the rest of the Highlands instead of across them, and his toes are still numb. 

The sand, when he hits it what feels like an hour later, shifts under Link’s weight. He crouches for half a second in blind panic, waiting for a Molduga. There’s no vibration under the earth. He breaks into a run again. 

Link knows where he is. It’s vague, but the Slate wouldn’t be any more help out here where there’s no signal. He’s still in the stealth clothes. He could catch a sand seal and ride it out, if he could just stop and sneak up on one, but he can’t make himself do it. That desperate numbness in his chest shudders a little, threatening, and Link runs faster to push it back down. He runs until his mind has blanked from even its efforts to send him back to Riju, and until nothing and everything hurts at the same time, drowning out the world. 

Things didn't go badly. If anything, they went better than anyone could've hoped. Link completed his mission, and ended up killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. He just hadn't expected the second one. And he hadn't expected it to feel the way it did. 

The desert may be a little warmer than the Highlands, but not by much. Link's numb feet keep failing him. When he slips for the dozenth time on the shifting sands and falls, winded, he doesn't get back up immediately. It takes almost more effort than he can muster just to manage a crawl. His body finally hit some kind of limit, it seems. Hours of running through the pitch darkness and the freezing cold, and that after what all he'd done before. 

The sun is rising, Link realizes. It's just now rising. He'd moved more quickly than he'd thought. Sand slips between his fingers as he draws himself up into a kneeling position, staring out into the nothingness and trying to catch his breath. It comes in heaves, and once he's started, he can't stop. His lungs are desperate for air. It feels like another hour spent there on his knees in the middle of the desert, no landmarks in sight, just the faintest touch of morning sun starting to paint the horizon when it isn't obscured by blowing sand. It comes in patches, waves. It shimmers even without the midday heat. Link thinks it might just be his vision coming and going, but he doesn't have the energy left to care. 

By the time he checks the Slate -- realizing his fingers are alarmingly stiff and cold in the process, no feeling left in them but painful prickling at the motion -- the signal of the map is weak, and it flickers and mostly stays gone, but Link still knows where he is. It's still a few of hours of walking at a good pace to reach Gerudo Town, and only that if he's lucky. There aren't any sand seals in sight, not as far as he can tell past the wind, which stings in his eyes now that he's thinking about it. He's grateful the Sheikah scarf still covers his mouth and nose, even if it hasn't been helping in the struggle to breathe. 

It's half an hour after that before Link forces himself back into motion, after reluctantly downing a hearty elixir to try and deal with the numbness in his extremities, which does help some, but does nothing for the total exhaustion. The trek is slow. It's more of a limping pace. Link's glad the weariness and the numbness keep his mind both occupied and blank at the same time. It's just one foot in front of the other across the shifting sand. 

As soon as the Slate has a strong signal, Link gives up and warps to the shrine outside Gerudo Town. It was less of a conscious decision and more of an instinctual reaction to spotting a poorly-camouflaged Lizalfo at the same time that it spotted him. Link wasn't ready for a fight, and he wouldn't be able to outrun it this time. He's not sure how he did that to begin with.

Sitting behind the shrine, shivering in the shadows but also immensely grateful for the morning sun starting to warm the air, Link changes into his  _ vai  _ outfit. It's accompanied by a strange kind of relief. It probably has less to do with the clothes themselves and more to do with the anonymity they bring, which is of a different kind than the stealth outfit. Link doesn't want to be hiding, doesn't want to be alone.

He does, really, in one way. But he doesn't in another. And there's work to be done. Doing it will help everything to feel better, and also to not feel at all. 

The Gerudo soldiers are flabbergasted. If Riju is then she hides it well, but the soldiers are open in their shock. Link already brought Molduga guts, he thinks, so they really should be starting to expect more from him by now. But it is nice to just be a strange Hylian  _ vai _ , capable of strange feats but commanding no expectations, at least not yet. 

Link is glad to hand the Thunder Helm over. Riju's face lights up for a brief instant in a way that makes her look painfully young, and then she smooths out that expression into something close to practiced boredom again, but Link saw it, the excitement and the relief. He's relieved too, ultimately, that that part of the ordeal is over and the Helm is back where it should be. He just isn't relieved by how it had to happen. 

Everything goes so quickly after that; Riju says she will meet him at the Outpost, and Link goes to try and catch a brief rest and restock on supplies, and the rest of the day is a blur of exhaustion and funny looks. He should probably come back for this, Link keeps telling himself. He should leave and prepare better like he did for the other Divine Beasts. Especially with how he feels. 

But Riju waits at the Outpost. He's kept her waiting long enough before he retrieved the Helm yesterday, having first come to Gerudo Town several months ago. Everyone's been kept waiting long enough. Certainly Urbosa. Certainly Riju. 

Link arrives at dawn, only twenty-four hours after he knelt on the desert sand and struggled to breathe, only half a day more since he flew through the Highlands on winged feet, racing past Lizalfos and throwing himself off a cliff. He can't think about it too much, or it'll only serve as a distraction, and it's one he can't afford. But he can't quite get rid of it either. 

Riju greets Link and explains her plan, and he nods along. Sure, he's ready. Yes, he understands. 

It doesn't go too badly. Link is almost fried a dozen times, but each time it's a narrow escape and he lives to tell the tale, which is good. He likes Riju, but he doesn't think Riju and Mipha should meet just yet. 

They part ways, he enters the Divine Beast, and he spends almost five days on the puzzles inside it. Urbosa speaks in his ear with that same calm, deep timbre of his memories, both soothing and unsettling him. She doesn't seem particularly impatient. He just can't focus. 

Before activating the main control unit, Link leaves. 

It's a trip to resupply, he tells himself, even though there's really nothing he needs. He can always use more arrows. More elixirs. It can't hurt. He convinces himself of it, and talks himself into going back to Gerudo Town, ashamed as he is to do it with Naboris still here, motionless but corrupted. He returns in the middle of the night, only half-sure he was even coming before his finger hit the warp button of its own accord. The tops of the walls aren't a good seat, a bit too cold and far too exposed to the guards, but in his  _ vai _ clothes he's just given the occasional wave and then largely ignored. 

"What's wrong?" someone asks from right by his side. Link startles and turns, but it's only Riju, looking curious, dressed in what he can only assume are pajamas. They stare at each other for a bit, and then she turns to look out over the Town as he had been. 

"When you retrieved the Helm," she says in a small voice, "I think maybe something happened that you didn't mention. That's what it seems like, anyway."

Link shrugs. A lot happens all the time, and Link never mentions any of it to anyone. 

"Did you get into a fight?"

Link nods, unwilling to lie. 

"Was it a lot of them?"

He shakes his head. 

"Just one?" 

Link laughs, for some reason amused by it having become a guessing game. Riju looks confused, so he waves a hand for her to wait. Coughs, fidgets. 

"Leader," he says eventually. To her credit, Riju doesn't look surprised at him speaking. 

"Oh, what happened?"

"He's dead," Link tells her honestly, almost desperately. He feels his hands start to tremble and presses them together to supress it. She doesn't say anything for a long moment, just tilts her head and thinks. 

"Did you kill him?" she asks slowly. 

"Yes. But no. Died from his own magic… accidentally."

Riju looks at him curiously. He clears his throat, tries to continue, but is at a loss for words. Waves his hands to try and tell her so. 

"Was he scary? Powerful?"

Link laughs despite himself, even if it sounds like a bit of a sob. Startled, Riju laughs too. 

"So no."

"No."

"And you didn't kill him," she says. "So then, what's wrong?"

Link looks at her, the young leader of her own people sitting next to him on the walls of her city in the middle of the night, waiting for him to go back and finish his appointed task. She looks patient and interested, eyes wide. 

"He… I would've," Link says. "I think."

Riju nods, says nothing. 

"I did before."

"Killed?" 

"Killed Yiga. I remembered it at Kara Kara."

"Lady Urbosa did too," Riju tells him with a shrug. "I know sometimes they teleport back, but they're human and they can die just like we can. Lady Urbosa made a deal of it… of only killing them when you had to, because otherwise we'd be no better than them. Our guards still follow that. But occasionally you have to."

"What if…" Link begins, then stops, unwilling to say it. Not to a child. 

"What if you wanted to?"

Link looks at her fully, staring into her eyes, hearing the quiet seriousness of her tone. She is the chief now, not just a child next to him anymore. She's both.

"Sometimes I want to kill the Yiga who took my mother's life. And sometimes I think the only thing besides Buliara that stops me is not knowing the Yiga's face. I could never know which one it was. I could never pick them out, even if I'd gotten a good look. But sometimes I'd want to anyway. I know that kind of anger isn't good. Maybe it's fair. But it isn't good and it isn't fair to everyone else. I can't pursue that. My mother… would be ashamed. But I feel it. And nothing can stop me from feeling it."

Link looks away from her, unable to meet her eyes anymore. 

"But listen… I don't think you're someone who would just kill and enjoy doing it. I think maybe you're angry like I'm angry." 

Link pictures Master Kohga standing before him, talking, laughing, looking and sounding different than all the faceless Yiga. Being too close to a person. Pictures him dying by falling into that pit, hears his scream over and over again. The memory of killing didn't hit quite as hard. It'd been easily ignored. Link doesn't remember that, not really, doesn't remember whatever anger motivated it. But he knows he would've killed Master Kohga if he had to, if there was no other way. Maybe even if there was. 

"I think it's all right to be angry," Riju goes on suddenly. "I think everyone gets angry. I don't think you and I are bad for feeling that. I don't know… I hope my mother would be proud of what I do with that anger."

Link gives a shrug and a nod. He's got nothing else to say. 

"Go on," she says after a minute. "Don't sit up here all night. Go to sleep or something. Buliara is probably lurking somewhere and she just might kill us both."

Link smiles, and she grumbles back a goodbye as she makes her way down. 

They could be friends, maybe, Link thinks. Maybe in another time. They could be good friends, even. He likes Riju and trusts her. And he does feel a little better, even getting advice from a child, even when it doesn't fix all the numbness and the confusion and the questions and the wondering. It doesn't fix anything really, but it doesn't hurt. Link watches Riju descend and catches the beginning of what looks like might be a scolding from Buliara, even though the bodyguard seems to have been watching the whole time. Link waves down at her when her head turns his way. She gives a disgruntled look and a reluctant wave back. 

Link does, in the end, go on to the inn for some sleep. Lying in the soft bed he wonders all over again why it sent him into such a stupor, such a blind panic, to watch a human die when he'd personally killed them before. He can't fathom himself doing that. It feels so disconnected from Link and his own experience that it's jarring to even consider the memory real. 

But he was so angry and so tired. He'd wanted to finish the fight, and he'd known there would be nowhere Master Kohga would teleport away to. He'd known it. When the Yiga conjured that giant spiked ball Link had magnesis ready to send him into the pit himself. 

But it doesn't matter in the end, he supposes, thinking of Riju. He'd been angry, yes, but he'd also been doing what he needed to do. 

It'd scared him to see that in himself, but at least he sees it, like Riju sees her own anger. 

Link supposes that's better than nothing, and resolves to think about it after he sees Urbosa, bright and early tomorrow morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11 minutes late and not proofread, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> long day


	19. ghost

A pale dawn creeps over the half-rotted roof of the Temple of Time, pressing thin rays of sunlight through the little remaining glass and arcing across the debris-littered floor. It’s a cold day. Colder than Link can remember this part of the Plateau ever being, though he spent most of his time here in late summer, when days were long and nights were humid. The weathered stone of the floor of the Temple is like ice even through Link’s shoes now. 

It's been just over a year since Link left this place. Nothing much has changed in that time; the same monsters return to the same places with every blood moon, though it's been a long time since Link's come to wipe them out again. There's no point, as he's been the only living human here in a hundred years. 

The bokoblins around the entrance to the Temple fell easily, disappearing into smoke under Link's blade without so much as a sound. He left their bones where they lay. He doesn't need any more of them, not now. 

Two weeks have passed since he finished everything he'd set out to do. There's only the castle left, and he's combed it a dozen times, traipsing through every room but the Sanctum again and again to ensure he didn't miss anything. The teleportation medallion is dropped at the doorway to the Sanctum, and it's been two weeks since Link left it there, ready for him to return. 

Everything is ready. These two weeks have been packed with visits and half-goodbyes. Link told no one what he's about to do, but maybe some of them knew and were kind enough not to mention it. He just wanted to see all the friendly faces again, in case it's the last time.

A day in Rito Village playing with the fledglings and getting laughed at by the adults. A night in Gerudo Town, chatting in the bar to drunken guards and then sitting with Riju in her room, sand seal toy on her lap, listening to her hopes for the future. Early morning in Zora's Domain, sparring with Bazz on one of his rare days off, which extended all the way into late afternoon and came to involve practically the whole Zora Guard, and their Prince. 

An afternoon mining with Yunobo. A morning in Hateno, rising from Link's own bed and bathing in the pond and wiping out those monsters down at the beach one more time, just for Koyin's peace of mind. 

Lurelin, Kakariko, Tarrey Town, the Sheikah labs, the Korok Forest. A lot of stables, and buying Beedle out of stock completely, because why not. 

It all blurs together a bit, these past two weeks and all the faces that filled them. It's been good to see them all again. They've all been a help in some way, whether directly or indirectly. Even the rude people served as lessons back when Link still hardly understood social interaction, having no memory or experience to draw from, and he learned the fine differences between what criticism he deserves and what criticism he doesn’t. It’s all been a lesson, meeting everyone has, and Link is grateful that most of it was taught with some degree of kindness. He thinks he’s come out of it all right. 

Link doesn’t regret spending all of that time. He’s finished every task that’s been requested of him, found all of the shrines, and done as much as he thinks he possibly can. It’s been a hard mindset to come around to. There are still monsters reviving, the roads are still unsafe, and everyone in Hyrule still faces daily hardships. But there’s only one thing Link can do about that, and it’s time to make that the priority.

It’s not that Link is sure he’s going to lose. He’s actually fairly confident by this point, with everything he has on his side now. He’s glad he took the advice to free the Divine Beasts to heart, even if it led him into an endless series of seemingly-time-wasting little quests for people all over Hyrule. He’s glad he did it, and he’s grateful that Zelda has been able to hold on and wait for him while he does. There’s no guarantee Ganon isn’t going to beat him, but Link has as much hope now as he’s probably ever going to have, and he’s okay with that. 

But he still wanted to say his goodbyes. It felt important in a way he can’t explain. Even if he’s only known these people for a year -- many of them even less than that -- they’re important to him, something that’s kept him going. He doesn’t want to fail them, and he doesn’t want to forget them. And he doesn’t want to lose the one opportunity he knows he has to speak to them one more time. If he got to say goodbye to anyone a hundred years ago Link doesn’t remember it, but he doubts it went that way. 

Not that the past matters now. The important thing is that Link’s said his goodbyes to the living. All that’s left, ultimately and in a strange way, is to say his goodbyes to the dead. 

The Champions are still with Link, at least for now. He knows they won’t stay. But he's said his goodbyes to them already in a way, and he sort of knows them again, and it feels like they've all made their own peace. Link isn't here for the Champions. 

The climb to the roof of the Temple isn't nearly as harrowing as it was the first time. Back then, Link hadn't been sure what awaited him and hadn't been too confident in his climbing abilities either, and he distinctly remembers being in a cold sweat the whole way up the ladder. After he'd discovered there  _ was  _ a ladder, once he'd attempted the climb the other side and taken a short but nasty fall. 

This time it's too easy and goes too quickly. He sits on the edge of the roof for a minute, looking out for a second time at one of his first real views of Hyrule. Link hasn't been back up here since. There are better views elsewhere, and his only business here has been done for a long time. 

A gust of icy wind rushes over the roof of the Temple, and Link tightens his grip reflexively on the edge. It’s unearthly quiet, same as before, the only sound that of the wind singing through the broken glass below. 

The last king of Hyrule, who was here that last time, is gone. He was gone even then, when Link met him, and in a way he had never been there at all. But Link didn’t meet him as the last king of Hyrule. Link met him as the first human besides himself that he knew existed, the first living and speaking being in a seemingly empty world. Without being alive himself, the king had taught Link how to be. And that is worth something. 

King Rhoam wasn’t kind. Well-intentioned as he may have been in life, and helpful as he was in death, the king was not one for kindness. He wasn’t cruel to Link. Didn’t blame him. Did what he, as both the king and as a father, thought was best. It hardly matters now whether he was right or wrong in his choices; certainly he was wrong a hundred years ago, and tried to make up for it on his second chance, but the outcome is what it is. Link isn’t sure what he’d have done without that strange old man to be some kind of anchor in his reality those first few weeks; perhaps he’d have managed fine, and perhaps not, but he’s grateful for that time nonetheless. 

Link had hated the old man, to be honest. He’d hated the non-answers and the secrets and the manipulative shrine-completing game and the laughs that always seemed at Link’s expense, not that he had any way of knowing with no memory and no framework for interacting with people or detecting a falsehood. He knows none of that was probably intended to be malicious. But at the time, when he’d been so confused and so raw, he’d wished for something else. 

He got it, he supposes, when the king revealed himself. That had ultimately been the answer to some of Link’s main questions, even if it was an answer he didn’t like any better than the secrecy. That part wasn’t the king’s fault, necessarily, but Link wishes it could have been different somehow, even if he can’t think of a better way to have gone about it. And there’s no point in dwelling on it now. Link has his own mistakes and failures that he still struggles to put behind him. He can’t carry around everyone’s. 

The sun is just peeking through heavy clouds for the first time this morning when Link crosses the roof, making him stop for a second and look out over Hyrule again, closer to the way he saw it here before. Frost on the grass below looks like a field of diamonds, and light splinters out over the rest of the kingdom and glints across the Duelling Peaks, just as Link would’ve seen them back when they were just the next unknown step on the journey. He only looks for a second, and moves on. 

Link had thought only briefly about what his goal was in coming here. He’d considered putting a silent princess here, as both a sort of grave marker -- not of a physical grave, of course, but maybe what someone might consider a spiritual one -- and as a token of thanks. But the silent princess was Zelda’s flower, and as generally liked as they are, it feels innately wrong to think of leaving one for the king, Zelda’s own father, whom she never got to speak to again the way Link did, as far as he knows. Maybe she did. He has no real way of knowing, not now, and he’s here to say his own goodbye anyway, not to the king he doesn’t remember but to the old man that he does. 

For a second he half-considered bringing a baked apple. There are a few in the Slate right now. But that’s just a thought that almost makes him laugh -- he might as well just eat one, as a sort of toast to the thought that Link himself, realistically, stole an apple from a king, unknowing and uncaring. That’d be a fitting tribute, he thinks. 

In the end he doesn’t plan to leave anything, and there’s nothing worth saying to the empty air. He just wanted to come here again for the sake of it. He could’ve gone to the empty little cabin, the place he associates most with the old man, but it was here in this tower that he learned the truth and so it’s here he is now, unable to reconcile the old man with the king of Hyrule, and finding he doesn’t care to try. 

It’s peaceful, dangling his legs out the empty window and watching a hawk circle and dive and rise again, far enough away that it’s barely a speck in the sky. The wind is cold. The clouds threaten snow or rain, even with the sun still creeping through them. It’s not the same here as it was before, not really, Link decides. The ghost of the king is gone, and the warm summer days are gone, though those will be back again. Link himself isn’t gone, only in that somewhere deep down he’s no different from the confused young Hylian who left that cave a year and a half ago, he’s just since learned to live, and to grieve. 

Link doesn’t grieve for the king. Not really. There’s nothing to grieve for. But he’s going to fulfil the king’s final wish anyway, knowing that from the moment the king gave voice to it that it became Link’s whole life, heedless of anything. He agreed to do it mainly out of a mix of confusion and moral justice and shame, not for the king. He eventually kept at it for himself, and then for everyone else he met along the way. None of it was for the king. It never really was. 

Link doesn’t end up saying his goodbye, because there’s nothing to say. He’s come, and soon he’ll go. And when he goes to the castle that’ll be enough. 


	20. companion

First, there is loneliness. The land of Hyrule is vast and mostly wild, and it's easy to go weeks on end without seeing another human soul. Kakariko and Hateno are too threatening anyway in their noise and their strangeness, and the stables are almost worse, so Link spends most of his time alone with only monsters and eventually his horse for company. There is loneliness to it, but there's no way around it. Settlements are too loud and too much, and Link enters them knowing he can't stay. It's easier, out in the wilds alone. He can breathe. It's enough. 

Then there's Mipha. Her gift enters Link's psyche and brings some semblance of her spirit with it, making a space for itself in his chest. He can feel her there, calming and familiar. He doesn't remember her, but he's still somehow less lonely. 

Sometimes it's like she's speaking without words, pressing some intent and meaning against Link's mind, and he eventually begins to almost understand it. When he uses her gift he can even see her, but only for a second before his vision dims, and sometimes as a flicker after when he's healed and awake. There's no time to speak to her then, but her eyes are kind. 

_ Calm,  _ she says in Hateno, when Link is back to see Purah and upgrade the Slate, and there are too many voices ringing through the village, too much noise, too much movement. Mipha's spirit, wherever it rests, comes to press against his mind. 

_ Calm _ . It's a little easier to breathe with something to pay attention to. Link's half convinced he's imagining it, but at the same time he  _ kno _ w _ s _ he can feel her presence, almost hear her voice. Link breathes despite everything. It's enough.

_ Peace,  _ Mipha says when Link is stopped by a traveller. How she knew before he did that it was no Yiga remains a mystery. Link reluctantly lets his guard down. Buys arrows. Moves on. 

_ Heal _ , she says when Link comes out of a moblin fight with several broken ribs -- Link understands her better now, and knows that she can't heal him unless he falls, but she wants him to tend to his own injuries. He obliges, mostly out of guilt. 

Even with Mipha, it's lonely. Link can feel her spirit most of the time, unless he's used her gift, and then she disappears for a while. Then he's just anxious and hollow and lonelier than ever until she returns. She doesn't interact much, and Link doesn't know how to speak to her so that she could understand. He wants to ask if she's real, if she can read his thoughts, his heart. But if she can, she doesn't answer. 

Mipha mostly speaks to Link when he's in some kind of danger, whether to press a warning to him of an enemy he didn't see sometimes, or to calm him down from a false but perceived threat. When he's afraid, her spirit seems to be stronger, something to lean on. It means everything to him for her to be there, much as it hurts and makes him feel guilty for still not remembering, even now. Still, it's lonely. 

Then there's Revali. 

_ Stupid _ , his spirit seems to say, and  _ useless _ , and all manner of other things that make Link freeze in place wherever he is, whatever he's doing. 

After it gets him hit by a shock arrow once, Revali doesn't say anything anymore. Not for a while, at least.

Link still feels his spirit there sometimes. Where Mipha's is quiet and steady and cool, Revali's flutters uncomfortably wherever it rests, uncomfortably cold at times. He doesn't speak when Link uses the Gale either, just gives a baleful look, which Link has to studiously ignore so as not to crash. His spirit just flutters away in Link's chest, seemingly seething. It goes away with the use of the Gale, but comes back faster than Mipha's does. Mipha's gone a lot more now -- Link is less careful and going to more dangerous places, sometimes becoming desperate and sloppy. Link uses Mipha's gift three days in a row trying to reach the Central Tower, feeling like he needs urgently to complete more of the map and he needs to do it  _ now.  _

It's when Mipha's away for the third time that Revali talks to Link again, in that wordless way. 

_ Reckless _ , he says, sharp and icy. It makes Link's head ache. Link stops in his tracks, crouching behind a stone to clutch at his skull in an attempt to make it stop. It's too soon to try again for the tower. At least until Mipha comes back. She hasn't talked to Link at all, maybe too drained. When she's back he needs to hurry. 

_ Up,  _ Revali says, not as coldly. Not as sharp, either. Still arrogant, but not unkind. 

_ Think,  _ Revali says. 

Link makes it up the tower singed but completely alive. 

After that Mipha and Revali work in sort of a tandem. Mipha provides the same gentle support that she's done since Link freed Vah Ruta, always a quiet presence in Link's mind. She still talks to him when he's injured or stressed, but Revali takes over in battle now, giving sharp directions and instructions that come as flashes in Link's head, which his limbs respond to on their own. It's incredibly helpful, even if it's stressful. Link's sure that Revali hates him as much as he's sure that Mipha doesn't. He's also sure he deserves hate far more than forgiveness. Either way, it's helpful, and having the two spirits with him means he's rarely actually alone, even with no living soul for miles around. 

Then there's Daruk, months after Revali, just when Link's adjusted to the fragile company of two spirits, and he has to make room for a third. 

Daruk is warm and steady and energetic. The fire of Death Mountain itself seems contained in his spirit, burning a hole in Link's chest for a week until he adjusts. Daruk's Protection is a welcome blessing, though, and having Daruk's soul as company is largely a pleasant thing. He doesn't ever say much, seems to keep his own space in Link's head, but steps into the position of warning Link of dangers if the other two aren't around. Just his presence is good anyway. Link feels Daruk's strength sometimes in the absence of his own, and it's there to lean on. 

With three ghosts alongside him, three souls of people who were once his friends and maybe still are in some ways -- possibly excluding Revali, but they seem to have reached some kind of agreement -- Link isn't ever truly lonely. He can't exactly talk to them. They aren't physical presences in his life, like the friends he's made since waking, but those friends are ones Link has to inevitably leave behind over and over again. But the Champions stay. 

They won't always be with him, Link assumes. And having them there sometimes feels like a curse, like having three judges always watching him, waiting to weigh in on every misstep and failure and weak moment, except that they never do. Even Revali doesn't anymore. It's always a nudge in the right direction instead of a chastisement for being wrong. It comes to feel safe, even with Links guilt and anxiety. If it's a curse, there's a twisted blessing wrapped inside it. 

Link goes alone to draw the Master Sword, just after retrieving the Thunder Helm. After the ordeal with the Fireblight, and knowing what comes after he frees Vah Naboris, Link figures it's time. 

The first time he traversed the Lost Woods, it was in search of Hestu. Link had known little of the Master Sword. He hadn't even tried to pull it once he saw it there. The way it stood in that pedestal, right in the center of the clearing, something about it struck Link as both deeply wrong and sincerely right, and he couldn't bring himself to touch it, not then. Mipha was the only one with him at the time. She'd said nothing, but he'd felt her touching his mind with an attempt to comfort as he lay in the Korok bed trying to sleep, unable to stop thinking about the legendary blade. 

After freeing Vah Medoh, and right after Revali stopped speaking to Link at all, Link tried to pull the Sword. Of course it didn't work. Revali's silence in response to it had nearly been worse than some kind of criticism. Link hadn't been able to sleep despite Mipha's attempts to calm him. He'd warped back to the Great Plateau to sit on that cliff in front of the Shrine of Resurrection, drowning in self-pity and self-loathing, wishing Revali would just say something already so that at least some of the chastisement wouldn't be coming from Link's own mind. 

_ Effort,  _ the Rito finally offered sometime around dawn, after a full night of Link sitting there unable to stop thinking about the Sword. 

_ Again _ , Revali pushed, and  _ stronger _ , and there was fierceness in it but no real cruelty. 

Link had moved on not long after that. Completed more shrines, headed to Death Mountain. It was on the way, anyway. Then he got tied up with Vah Rudania, and he'd gone ahead and freed Daruk and then meandered on to the desert, and now he's here again staring down at the Master Sword and hoping that despite the Deku Tree's warning it won't actually kill him. 

_ Strong _ , Daruk says, as though he knows Link's thoughts. Maybe he does. 

_ Stronger _ , Revali says, almost as a correction. Link still isn't strong. He's sure he's nowhere near what he once was, and that that wasn't even close to what he needs to be. 

_ Enough,  _ Mipha says, and Link still understands her best, and knows she doesn't lie to him. 

He pulls the Master Sword. 

There's a lot to be said about holding the legendary blade, but Link doesn't know exactly what to make of it. It's well-balanced. It hums and glows in his hand around Malice. It feels almost alive, almost sentient, but it doesn't speak to him. He assumes it never did. It's enough to just have it with him, to know that one more piece is in place. Link doesn't know what to think beyond that. 

_ Finally,  _ Revali butts in. He's grown more and more talkative lately. Link can't even bring himself to be annoyed. 

The Thunderblight is difficult. The fight is maybe harder than Link's faced so far on his journey, and he sees Mipha in the first hour of his first attempt. He sees her on the second attempt, too, and aborts the effort faster this time, learning from his mistakes. He won't risk staying and trying to finish the fight without Mipha. 

The third time goes much the same, but when Link warps away, he was  _ close. _ He's figured out how the Blight moves, how it works. 

On his fourth try, after a heavy night's sleep at the Bazaar, Link defeats it. Revali preens. His warnings definitely helped, as did Daruk's shield. Link doesn't know how he would've done it otherwise. He would've managed, he hopes, but he's grateful nonetheless. 

Then there's Urbosa. 

Urbosa is exactly as Link expects, knowing only what little he does about her. But she's also more than that. 

Whatever gaps remained between the Champions' spirits, whatever residual space existed in Link's chest, Urbosa consumes. Her presence is steadying. Her spirit ties everything together, binding it up tight and holding it in place. Even lacking memories, Link feels in a way completely whole. 

It's almost too much. It should be too much, really -- four voices in his head, four wordless existences alongside his own -- and Link feels that if it were any other four, he wouldn't be able to stand it. He almost can't. 

For a week Link wanders. He kills molduga, enjoying the mindless effort of the fights. The Champions stay out of it. They know he doesn't need assistance. He travels the desert, finishes requests for the Gerudo. He combs the Highlands for treasure. He sleeps by campfires in the icy darkness, staring into them until his eyes burn, trying to keep his mind from splintering with the enormity of what's to come, and what he holds within himself. 

The Champions stay quiet. Link feels Urbosa, though she hasn't spoken to him. He feels her strength and her fury and her steadiness rounding out Revali's sharp edges, warming Mipha's love until it nearly burns from the inside, and bolstering Daruk's endless goodwill and fortitude into something that pushes forward rather than just holds Link up. 

Urbosa's own spirit is that of a warrior, not unlike Link's own, and he feels a curl of satisfaction from her with every blow he lands on every enemy, but she's more than just that. She completes them all. 

It's on one of those nights in the Highlands, when his spirit is a little lighter and Revali's started to chime in on fights again -- warning Link of an incoming arrow and preening when Link dodges it as though it's Revali's own personal victory -- when Link realizes it's been a long time since he's been truly lonely. 

From the days of waking at the Plateau, being lost and adrift and raw and young, to nights spent in the wilds to avoid living people, something has changed. It doesn't feel like loneliness anymore.

When it's over, Link thinks, they'll be gone. He'll be alone again.

But it'll be over. The work will be done, and maybe Link can learn to be alone again or maybe he can learn to be with others, genuinely and completely, and he can exist with the living. 

Either way, it'll be done, and Link won't have done it alone. 

Anyone else might look at this long journey and think it's a lonely thing, a stretch of painful dark emptiness. Link himself at the beginning assumed it would be. He isn't sure now how he had the courage to set himself down that path, except that maybe he didn't know of anything else, didn't understand the difference.

He understands now. And he's grateful. 

_ Thank you _ , he thinks, still unsure if his friends can even read his thoughts. He tries to push it against their spirits the same way they press at his, gentle but firm, careful but unyielding. The way Mipha first gave Link  _ calm _ and  _ peace _ and  _ heal.  _

And he's sure they understand. Their spirits seem to push back against his. It's not something Link can ever share with the living, and it's not something he can explain, but he won't forget it either. 

First there was loneliness, then there was Mipha. Then the rest. 

In the end there's only Link. But it's enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> few minutes late again, oops.   
> I know this concept has been done by a lot of better writers! but I just like it, and tried to do it justice in a hasty one shot, which turned out to be hard as fck.


	21. ancient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw- animal death, violence, not graphic

Link caught Ruby in Hebra. He glided straight down onto her back all the way from the region's Sheikah tower, which would've been an impressive feat if he'd had the stamina left to hang on. 

When he fell, he fell right behind her back feet. She should've kicked him. She didn't, just took off like a flame over the snow, and he watched in awe. Then he vowed to come back for her in the morning. 

It took a creative maneuver with Revali's Gale to manage it, but on the second go, Link held on. 

Ruby was easily tamed after that. Link won her over with food and pats and vague noises that he hoped were calming. He'd only had a gentle old spotted mare before, but Ruby was just as easy to befriend once he committed to it. 

Getting Ruby was life-changing. She became Link's constant companion, rarely out of hearing distance. He hadn't known that a horse could be so indifferent to the sounds of battle, so unhesitant in plowing right over enemies or drawing up next to them so Link could strike. After a battle she'd settle down to graze without so much as a flick of her ears, sides still heaving from the exertion. 

She didn't even fear Guardians. Though there are faster horses in Hyrule, and Link has seen them, Ruby was steady and responsive through their first Guardian fight, ready to dodge lasers at a second's notice. She and Link came out unscathed, somehow, though the experience had shaken him. From then on he left her behind to wait for him. She'd fix an incomprehensible but intelligent look on his back, but she wouldn't follow.

It was, ironically, a stray Guardian laser that killed her anyway. 

Link was inconsolable. 

Though he had three other horses in the stable system by then, he didn't take out any of them. He couldn't. Watching Ruby die, smelling the burning of her hide and seeing her large dark eyes open and still in death, he couldn't risk that again. 

If Ruby could die, with her stocky frame and her odd intelligence, her strength and her uncanny speed over rough ground, her hardiness and her steady nature -- any other horse wouldn't even last those six months with Link, he reasons, not with the kind of life he lives.

He teleports around Hyrule after that. Or uses his own two feet, because his body can't die, at least not so easily. 

It's definitely slower sometimes, and less pleasant. Like a jog through the pouring rain, trying to avoid being seen by the mounted bokoblins around the Highland Stable, which he'd promised once to wipe out on his first and only visit here, and hadn't gotten around to doing before Ruby died. With her, they'd have been easy to defeat. It would've been almost fun, circling and passing, knocking them from their poor horses. It'll be a chore now. So Link avoids them for the time being, seeking just to escape the rain. 

In the stable -- a place he generally doesn't like to be anymore, since there's little reason when travelling without a horse -- there's an open book on the table. Link picks it up for something to do. He's avoiding Beedle's eager eyes, being low on money. 

That little book, a copy of the Rumor Mill, proves interesting. 

That book sends him to Malanya's Spring. 

The Horse God terrifies Link. Maybe out of guilt, or maybe just because it's terrifying. Either way, Link only half listens to what the being tells him, at least until it mentions the power it holds. 

He'd come here in search of the ancient horse gear, though he isn't sure why he wanted it in the first place. It was just something to do. He hadn't come expecting a deity capable of equine resurrection. 

Link considers the offer. It might be unfair of him to accept it -- some part of Link is bitter at being forcibly returned to life to finish a mission he doesn't remember, and it feels hypocritical for him to consider doing something much the same. Ruby may not have been a human, but it doesn't matter. It feels wrong.

At the same time, though, Link himself is glad to be alive. His bitterness isn't about getting a second chance at life. It could never be that.

If he asks Malanya to revive Ruby, then he could release her and let her do as she will, having been robbed of two months but not of the rest of her life. 

Link asks. 

The process of reviving Ruby only terrifies Link more. The unearthly rattling of Malanya's bones, the half-joking threats, the faintest smell of burning hair that jolts Link back to half a dozen different bad memories by now. He leans back, heart pounding. 

And then, there's Ruby. 

Malanya says something else. Link isn't listening. Maybe it's another threat or maybe it's just a farewell. It doesn't matter, because Ruby is there just a few yards away, swishing her tail and giving him an unimpressed look. 

Slowly Link pulls out an apple, and she saunters over to snatch it from his hand. 

When he finally remembers what he did actually come here for -- and he hardly cares at the moment, but he's too disturbed by Malanya to want to come here again anytime soon -- Ruby plods along behind him as he goes to unearth the chest. 

The ancient saddle is worn under Link's fingers, some parts cold and others warm. It doesn't feel so different from Link's own ancient armor, though he only has the chest piece; it has something almost like a hum of energy passing through the material. Link can't picture placing it on an animal. He stares at it, wondering if it gives any protection from Guardians like his does, when Ruby starts nibbling the straps. 

She seems completely unperturbed by the strangeness of the thing. After she loses interest in trying to eat it and moves on to trying to eat Link's hair -- uncharacteristic of her really, but she seems unusually playful -- Link thinks about the bridle and where it must rest by the Lord of the Mountain's pond, if his guess is correct, and what the set could mean. 

Link tries to take Ruby back to the Highland Stable for the night, but she seems more interested in grazing than anything else and he doesn't want to be around people either. They camp out on the road nearby, Ruby seeming to have no intention of wandering away. 

Link isn't sure how he ever thought she would just leave, when she's always come at the sound of his whistle, faithfully heading unflinchingly into danger just to answer his call. 

He gives her another apple, and then another. Pulls the horse armor out of the Slate to look at it again. 

Two weeks later, a stablehand helps Link fit Ruby with the whole set. Thankfully it works with her build; of course it would be sized for a warhorse, Link realizes. He's slightly concerned about the way the bridle covers so much of her head, but the stablehand just shrugs. 

"She doesn't seem to care," she says, patting Ruby's neck. "Don't know where you came up with this stuff, never seen anything like it before. But it ain't a bad idea. Seen too many travellers come in with their horses hurt bad these days. She's a good girl, isn't she?" 

Ruby snorts, as if acknowledging the compliment, and Link nods in agreement. 

It turns out that the armor lets Ruby teleport. 

Link is extremely shocked the first time it happens. When she disappears and then appears right next to him looking slightly annoyed but largely unbothered, Link has to sit down. 

It means he can leave her further from danger though, and let her roam where she wants most of the time while still being able to call her to him anytime. It also seems to bolster her endurance. She's always been able to maintain a steady canter through a whole night, but now she can stretch to a gallop again and again and seem unaffected. 

Maybe the armor helps defend against Guardians and maybe it doesn't, but Link is committed to not testing it. That's not something he plans to risk again. It does deter arrows, though, and when Link returns to the Highland Stable to tackle those mounted bokoblins, the only two blows they land just glance right off the material. 

Whenever Link sees the roof of a stable in the distance, he's taken to saying a quick thanks to Malanya for the blessing it gave him. But he also reminds himself sometimes to thank the ancient Sheikah who made the Guardians and the Divine Beasts, but who also must've made this horse armor. At least one of them must've loved their horse very much to have developed it and crafted it so finely, and to have imbued it with that strange power that all the ancient Sheikah artifacts carry. It's an incredible thing. 

Ruby's chestnut coat shines beneath the dark material, and she still moves like a flame over the snow. Link's glad she's with him again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doing my annual OoT playthru today, got epona, started thinking about botw horses and their goddamn mortality, so there's that


	22. character

Training to pull the Master Sword isn't going particularly well. 

Finding shrines is a task in itself, now that Link's activated most of the ones around settlements and by roads. The sensor on the Slate only goes so far when Link hardly knows where to look anymore. He spends a solid hour sometimes zooming in and out on the map, marking places where there should be shrines, the gaps between the clusters. Then he goes there and wanders around until the Slate beeps, if he doesn't get sidetracked first. 

Actually completing them is almost worse. There's no element of distraction; the shrines are sterile and cold, bare of anything to capture Link's attention. There's no one making requests, no stal-creatures at night, no weird sights to explore. 

Somehow the focused aspect of being in a shrine is just harder to deal with. The pressure of knowing there's a monk at the end who has been waiting for an unfathomable stretch of time just for someone to come and claim the Spirit Orb, that's almost a distraction in itself. Sometimes the trial inside is easy, or straightforward like a combat trial. Sometimes the puzzles make Link's head hurt and he just has to leave the shrine unfinished before he breaks something. Those are the worst. When he returns all his progress will be gone, and his head will already be filled with other things, and then it's the same ordeal all over again until he makes a breakthrough. 

So shrine hunting isn't going particularly well, and Link's endlessly frustrated. 

That's what led him here to Tabantha, obsessively breaking rocks and gathering wheat and chasing frogs below Rito Village, just for some respite while he tries to pick a shrine to double back to. 

"I won't ask," a calm voice says from behind him, while Link's in the middle of smashing an ore deposit to smithereens with a bokoblin arm. 

Link doesn't turn, recognizing the voice and choosing to ignore it. 

"I'll ask," another voice chimes in, almost indignantly. "Link, what're you doing?"

That one is harder to ignore, especially when accompanied by a lot of furious flapping. Tulin is mostly a good flier these days, but it takes him a lot of effort to leave the ground. He ends up barreling right into Link on his stubby legs, looking up with starry eyes and not so much as an apology or hello. 

Link puts the bokoblin arm back in the Slate. Tulin looks too curious, and those bones can have very sharp edges. 

"Tulin," Teba says. 

"Sorry."

"And?"

"Sorry Link. But what are you doing?"

Link just shrugs, gesturing at the shattered stone. Their guesses are as good as his. It's exactly what it looks like, except that he has no use for precious stones these days, already having a hoard of every kind. 

"Saki's waiting. Come on," Teba says, and for a second Link thinks it's to him before he realizes Tulin's little wings are still wrapped around his leg. 

"Yes, dad." The little wings let go. 

There's a minor commotion as Tulin struggles to take off, and Link turns back to the pile of crushed rock he's made, intent on sifting through it for anything he's missed.

"So what is it?"

Link jumps this time, startled after thinking Teba left with Tulin. Once Link's recovered he gives Teba a questioning look. The Rito just sighs. 

Link gestures at the pile of rubble again. 

"Not that," Teba says. "Not what. Why."

Link turns to stare. He likes Teba a great deal, and a big part of that is because they don't really talk at all. Link isn't sure why Teba's trying to change that now. 

"Come to the Flight Range," Teba says brusquely, as though Link had actually answered. 

Link watches, baffled, as the Rito flies away. 

He does go to the Flight Range. 

It isn't that day, or even the next day. It's nearly a full week later, after another frustrating attempt on the Daka Tuss shrine, which he activated months ago and never completed. At some point in every attempt he'd make some nearly-irreparable mistake and have to start from the beginning, and inevitably want to tear his hair out, and end up leaving it unfinished again to focus on other important things. 

Going to the Flight Range isn't exactly important, but it's something to do that isn't a thousand feet underground. 

Link climbs the ladder with confidence, but ends up slinking guiltily through the door. Teba doesn't so much as look up from his place by the fire. 

"That was a long trip," he says drily, "Could've flown you over."

Link comes to sit and warm his fingers. Teba waxes a bowstring in long methodical strokes. There's no sound but the wind outside, howling its way down through the empty pit of targets. 

It's late evening. Link left the shrine two full days ago, but got sidetracked searching Lanayru for any more, and then on the way here he'd taken a detour to deal with a Yiga for the sake of it. Everything feels a little pointless as drawing the Master Sword is the only real next step to take, but as long as Link's working on something he doesn't have to think about it too much. 

Here, by the fire and in the quiet, it's hard to avoid thinking about the Sword. 

"So, what is it?" Teba finally asks, just as he had a week ago. 

Link shrugs, staring into the fire until his eyes start to sting. Teba doesn't reply, and Link fidgets for a while, strangely uncomfortable with the usual silence. Teba's started a conversation and Link itches to have it finished one way or another. He just doesn't know what to say, and Teba isn't continuing. 

The Slate feels unusually heavy in Link's hands when he frees it from his hip. Teba spares it a brief glance but doesn't comment. He does look again, though, and stares, when Link pulls out a sword and lays it on his lap. 

It isn't the Master Sword, of course it isn't. It's a royal broadsword Link got from a Hinox last week, one of plenty he's burned through. He lays a hand on the hilt, runs a finger over the winged crossguard. Stays silent. 

Teba watches. Says nothing either. 

The silence still isn't comfortable. Link loses himself in the reflection of fire off the chipped blade across his knees, thinks of the one in the forest, the mirror image of this one. No, he corrects himself, not a mirror. This one is the false sword. There's only one true sword resembling the form of this one, and it isn't in Link's hands, and it feels like at this rate it never will be. But he can't tell Teba that. 

It ultimately doesn't matter. Teba starts waxing the bowstring again, and the motion is soothing in the corner of Link's eye. Link doesn't need to say anything. Teba won't ask, and isn't concerned about the naked blade in Link's lap, and maybe the conversation doesn't need to be finished after all or even had in the first place. 

"That's not your sword," Teba says. 

Link looks up at him. Teba looks right back, and the Rito's eyes are perceptive. 

"That's not the sword of the Hylian Champion."

Link turns the blade over in his hands and doesn't answer, tracing his fingers across the wings again. They aren't quite right, he thinks. The whole thing isn't. But of course he knows that, he's seen the Master Sword, even if he hasn't held it yet, not in this life. But he knows it wouldn't be in the same balance as this one, somehow. 

"Doesn't matter," Teba says suddenly, gruff as ever, putting away the wax. "Any weapon is just a weapon. The strength isn't in that."

Link doesn't answer, but he puts the sword away. He wonders how Teba knew.

"Your face is an open book."

Link figures that's something he would've never heard before in his past, with what seemed like a reputation for being emotionless. He wouldn't know what it felt like, but he's seen it in memories. Maybe part of him assumed that hadn't changed, that he's still as blank on the outside as he sometimes feels. He wishes the sword were back in his hands for something to mess with. He can't bring himself to meet Teba's eyes. 

"Come back sometimes," the Rito says as he props the unstrung bow against the wall, presumably finished. "Tulin asks about you. Door's open."

Teba doesn't wait for Link to answer, which Link's grateful for. He does pass a wing over Link's head on his way to the doorway, and pauses with it still there. 

"Saki asks too," he says. And then he goes out the door, dipping off the deck into a graceful glide, flapping to gain altitude. He's gone before Link knows it, disappearing into the dark. 

Link sits by the fire for a while. He doesn't see the Master Sword in it; he sees Tulin playing here and Teba stringing a bow. He thinks maybe he can see Revali here too, training in the pit of targets. 

The Flight Range is a good place to sleep on a cold night, better than out in the wilds and better than in a cramped and crowded inn. Link lets the fire burn low and wraps himself in a blanket, feeling the icy wind slip through the open doorways and not minding it. He sleeps well here on the wooden boards. He's glad to be alone but safe. 

Maybe in the morning Teba will come back with Tulin, as seems to be their routine. Link could stay and play with the fledgling, train in the updrafts, learn to maintain a bow by watching it meticulously done over and over in the firelight. He wouldn't have to talk. It would be easy to stay here, maybe even if judgment came to rest in Teba's eyes. This would still be a safe place even then. 

There's no time for it, of course. The Sword waits in the woods, and there are others waiting too. There's still work to be done.

Link leaves before dawn, warping off the landing and disappearing into the pinkish mist, thinking only about how maybe after everything, there will be time, and this could be a good place as any to rest. And Teba would let him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> few minutes late again of course. have zero free time this week. anyway, favorite character? don't strictly have one, but if you've seen any of my other botw fics, well.   
> wish I'd done this one better, but just ran out of time 乁( •_• )ㄏ


	23. zelda

It's always the small things Link hates ever forgetting. It's the smell of Goron spice, the warm fur of a dog, the delicate balance of a fine Zora spear. These are the things he lies awake thinking about after he's lived them again. It's the small things, the inconsequential. The minor comforts of life. Link hates having all of them erased from his head, even if he has the chance to rediscover them anew -- if he'd known these things, known the small pleasures life had in store, it could've been easier in the beginning when he was so lost and bordering on hopeless. It's always the small things. 

Link doesn't think he hates forgetting the Hylian Princess. 

In a way, he feels as if he never truly forgot her at all. Hers was the first human voice he heard, even if it was ethereal. Hers was the first name, the first identity he had yet to give shape to, but that he somehow knew anyway, even when he didn't. 

Hers was the life Link swore to protect a hundred years ago, the doing of which cost him his own.

He doesn't resent her for that. Link doesn't know if he has it in him to truly resent anybody. With that said, he also assumes he'd once have thought he wouldn't have the capacity to forget anybody, not totally and completely like he has. 

He's known of the Princess since waking. Everyone else is gone. 

But even with the Princess being the one Link knows best, centering in all his memories, being his very purpose for existing, Link feels like he doesn't know her either. Not really. Not like he should. Everyone's told him about her in some way or another, and he has thirteen memories all centering around her. He remembers her more than he remembers himself. But he doesn't know her. 

She liked silent princess flowers, she liked science, she was clever and brave and fiery. She had her own struggles with her father and her place and her destiny. She was flawed, multifaceted, human. She carried the powers of the Goddess. She hated Link and then apparently she didn't, even if he struggles to understand exactly what changed between those fragments of memory. The details are likely lost to everyone but her. 

He's afraid to meet her again. 

Sometimes it feels like she can see him somehow from wherever she is in the castle. On the nights of blood moons when she reaches out, it's as though she's right behind Link, speaking right in his ear. It doesn't matter where he is. It feels like she watches, sees everything. 

Link's probably paranoid, he knows. If she could see him, surely she'd have more to say than just another warning about the blood moon. Even without much memory of her, he's sure she would be exasperated with him. Anyone would be. 

He doesn't know if she would blame him, either. He doesn't think she would -- he doesn't blame her for the way things happened, and couldn't -- but he doesn't know her, can't be sure. Maybe it'd be understandable if she blamed him. After all, she found her powers late but in the nick of time, and then it was Link who fell, Link who didn't wake for a hundred years. 

It's Link who wanders Hyrule now, seeing old friends and making new ones. The Princess would give anything, Link's sure, to speak to Impa or Urbosa again. She would remember them and be able to connect with them the way Link likely never will. It's unfair, he thinks, for it to be him who is free here, and for her to be trapped containing the Calamity. 

But then it's all unfair, in the end. And he thinks the Princess would understand that too. Maybe better than anyone. 

The thought of an after is hard to contemplate. If Link defeats the Calamity it just opens up a new world of uncertainty. By now he doesn't fear lacking a place in this new world; he's made one along this journey, he thinks, or even a few. He could stay in any of the settlements or all of them. He could travel forever and lend a helping hand to anyone who needed it. He could just kill monsters for the rest of his life if need be, or for as long as there are monsters to kill, monsters that are a threat to anyone. 

Link could live reasonably and comfortably off the land in Hyrule, out in the depths of Hebra or even in the far reaches of the desert. He understands now how to survive and he's excellent at it. Even without the Slate he thinks he could learn. It would be easy to never see a living soul again if he wanted that. 

He doesn't, though. He doesn't know exactly what he'd ideally want, but it isn't to be alone forever. 

It's just facing the Princess that makes everything so complicated -- will he be expected to be her guard again, after everything? There's no reason to expect him to, but there's also no reason to expect him not to. If he has a duty to her now that's carried over a hundred years, shouldn't the rest come too? Link doesn't know how he would possibly be a royal guard at this point, doesn't remember how he ever was or what it entailed. 

He doesn't know how it would change things, either. He'd probably have to follow her in silence again, always a step behind, conforming to rules he'd have to relearn entirely from scratch. Maybe she'd want something different, less decorum, but he'd have to learn that too. 

If Link isn't supposed to be her guard again, then that's almost worse and more uncertain. When she's back, will there be a monarchy again, and is that even possible now? Will be he expected to have any role in that? He'd almost have to, he thinks. If he didn't it would just be more confusing and it would feel like avoidance.

All of those possibilities hinge on the idea that the Princess won't hate Link anyway, and he can't even be sure of that. He doesn't know her or what she will want. He doesn't like that his future feels like it rests entirely on her, just like his past and his present sometimes seem to. 

Maybe he does resent her, just a little.

It feels cruel to think it. He tries to tell himself it isn't her, that it's the situation they're both in, that it isn't her fault. And those things are true. But it all feels like it comes back to her anyway, or it will, and Link feels tortured by it. 

Please be careful, Link, the Princess says again for the hundredth time, and Link feels her just behind him, just for a second. He's in the middle of nowhere for once, awake by a campfire with his horse. The blood moons don't scare him anymore. He can focus on the Princess's voice in his head now, try to pick out tones in it, try to remember its sound. Try not to resent hearing it. 

She sounds pleading, almost desperate. Quiet. 

Human. 

Link pokes absentmindedly at the fire, ignoring the red sky and swirling flakes of ash. There was concern in her voice. A plea. 

Link only remembers hearing that tone in one memory. There was ash and Malice in the air then, too. 

There are small details about the Princess that Link can't remember. There have to be, like that desperate tone. She didn't want him to die and she still doesn't. If it's just for the good of Hyrule and for her own sake, Link thinks her tone would be more commanding and less vulnerable. 

He doesn't know her. Doesn't remember the small things about her that would make her feel more human, more real. That might make the thought of the future less hopeless, might make Link feel less lost. It's always the small things. 

He wonders, thinking of that pleading voice, if maybe she would want him to think of her not as the Princess, but by her name.


	24. instrument

Out in the deepest, wildest stretches of Hyrule, where no travellers have passed in a hundred years and few if any living eyes have seen, there is still life. In the wilderness where settlements once were, or in areas where the land was always wild and uninhabited by the five human races, animals still thrive and multiply. The deepest parts of the Faron woods teem with life. The isolated slopes of Hebra are never truly barren. The far stretches of the desert and the unseen depths of the ocean are still home to strange creatures that live unseen and always have. 

It's not emptiness, out in the wilds. Link has never seen it as such. From the time of his rebirth on an empty plateau to the weeks on end spent travelling dark forests, the land has never felt truly empty. 

After a while, after really knowing people, Link longs for that false emptiness. He finds himself returning to places again and again where he knows he won't find human company. Days go by more slowly when there's no one around. The air feels cleaner. It's easier to focus, and to feel genuinely alive. 

Monsters tend to congregate near settlements, too. That isn't to say there are none out in the wild; there are plenty, and they are just as aggressive when confronted, and they are sometimes even more deadly. Lynels make their territories out of empty places, after all. Even if they're the ones who've emptied them. 

It's just easier, in the wild, to avoid the omnipresent monsters. Link sees them chasing wild boars, dancing at campfires, squabbling amongst themselves, patrolling their territories. No humans for miles. It's easier, when there's no one at risk of being harmed, to just leave the monsters alone. It's quieter. 

So Link doesn't mind the loneliness of being out in the wilderness, because it doesn't feel inherently lonely. He seeks for it. He can survive off the land, make a life from nothing just about anywhere; it feels like he's done it a thousand times over now, and he isn't afraid of empty land or being alone. 

It has its own difficulties, though, the reality of spending so much time that way. Calm days can become treacherous. Everything can change in an instant, and usually for the worst. Link is always listening, always watching, even in his fragile sleep. The wilds aren't a friend. They just aren't an enemy, either. They feel safe, and they also don't. 

It's tiring constantly being on guard. It doesn't even matter when Link isn't in the wild -- when he's with people he finds himself even more vigilant, certainly more tense -- but there's something to be said about the transition from one to the other, when it's not forced. 

Leaving a village to go back on the road is almost always a relief. Entering a village after weeks in the wild can be a relief too, in its own way. Especially when Link is visiting a friend or carrying out some menial task. It's almost soothing then, seeing people and lived-in houses and children playing. Knowing there's still this, there's still someone else in the world. Settlements feel fragile in a way that the wilds don't -- there are ruins of habitation everywhere, but the scars the Calamity wrought on nature are healing themselves over and over until it's as though nothing has ever changed in the woods and canyons and mountains and deserts. Link knows that isn't true, but the wild has incredible power to heal itself. People do too, but not alone. Not against the Calamity. 

It's on a day when Link is leaving Hateno, leaving his own house behind because he feels suffocated by it, that he realizes all of this. Not all at once, but in the piecing together of all the things he already knew. 

Link came here to rest and heal from a harsh blow to the head. It'd been a Lynel sword. Link hadn't dodged correctly, something rare these days, and somehow he'd been caught hard with the flat of it and sent flying. Even the best elixir he had on him didn't fully cure the dizziness, the persistent ache. Link had warped away to a random spot -- a tower, where he knew there would be no witnesses -- and spent hours throwing up, trying to force another elixir to stay down. It'd only half worked. He was already tired, and no amount of elixirs would fully cure that either. 

So when the worst of the sickness passed, Link had warped to Hateno and made his way down to his house in the dead of night. 

Bolson wasn't there, nobody was. It was late and raining. Link slipped inside and holed up for a day and a half, locking the door against voices outside, trying to stay quiet. He likes the Hateno house. He just doesn't like being in it when it means being there with anybody else. 

So on the second day he escapes -- slips out the window when there seems to be no one about -- and heads down to Hateno Beach in the hazy midmorning sun that moves in and out of the clouds. 

It takes some climbing to go the route that completely avoids villagers. Link's head still throbs some so he takes it slowly, but it's worth the extra time. There's nowhere he needs to be, not more urgently than usual at least. 

The beach is empty. Sometimes it isn't, now; Link usually tries to take out the monsters down here when he comes to Hateno, and so villagers regularly make the trek. He hasn't been here in a while though. It looks like no one else has either. 

It isn't cold out, but the wind off the sea makes Link shiver. His boots sink a little in the sand as he sways in place slightly, finding his bearings after the careful climb down. 

Even with monsters not too far in the distance -- far enough not to spot him, but close enough to keep an eye on -- it's peaceful here. Link tries to breathe deeply and deliberately, the way he was struggling to in his house. 

The smell of the sea carries on the wind, and the cry of a gull, and the lapping of water on sand and stone, and something else, something else--

Link's feet carry him towards one of the most familiar sounds in Hyrule before he even knows he's moving. 

The sea is a little choppier than usual. Link debates slipping into the Zora armor to better navigate the water, but decides against it. Too much work. He swims in his clothes instead and almost instantly regrets it as he struggles through the water. At least he'd put his weapons in the Slate. And his hair can probably use the wash anyway, he figures.

It feels like an hour before Link drags himself hacking and coughing up onto a rock. His vision flickers, earlier dizziness returning. He sits there for a minute squinting off over the water and trying to get his breathing under control. 

"Didn't think I'd see you here again," Kass calls down to him charitably. 

Link ignores him in favor of coughing up a little more water into his own lap. 

"Would you like to hear the verse about this area again?" Kass asks, mild curiosity bleeding into his tone. Maybe a hint of concern. 

Link shakes his head. He remembers it just fine. Seventeen of twenty-four. This rock points to the retrieval of the Hero's Cache. Link may not remember the exact wording, but that's enough to go on if he ever gets around to it. He didn't really expect to see Kass here again either -- sure, Kass usually sticks around somewhere until Link's found the shrine from his song, but it's been weeks since he met Kass here and then left. And this isn't a shrine, or so Link assumes. 

At this point, he wouldn't be too surprised if it is indeed a shrine, situated a mile under the ocean. That wouldn't genuinely surprise him much at all. 

"Well," Kass says, "Would you like to hear a different song?" 

Link doesn't answer, floundering over and climbing up Kass's rock instead. He lets his legs dangle over the edge, slumping over his knees and staring down at the water. 

"The usual one, perhaps?"

Link shakes his head violently at that, and Kass tilts his curiously in response. Link knows the song Kass refers to. He doesn't need to hear it again, the ballad about the hero and the princess and the fight against Ganon so many centuries ago. 

"Perhaps some quiet then," Kass eventually murmurs, and Link feels guilty. His friend doesn't look perturbed, just curious, and yet somehow still content. His sharp, calm eyes wander out over the horizon, following the swooping motion of a gull. Link watches it too. It's quiet. 

Link feels comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. This is what he'd aimed to do -- sit quietly somewhere alone and rest his head out in nature where he can breathe, where there's just him and the false-empty wilderness for company, where it feels safe just as much as it doesn't. 

Kass isn't separate from that. He's in an in-between space that Link doesn't quite understand. Link sought him out, after all, like always. Kass feels like a part of the wilderness wherever he is, but also more than that. 

Link has heard the plaintive tones of that concertina echoing from Sheikah towers, from dense jungles and forgotten lakes. He would know that sound anywhere. And he always unfailingly follows it, and it always leads to Kass. 

For what it's worth, Kass is good company. For the amount that he talks and all that he probably knows and doesn't say, it never bothers Link in the way it sometimes does with other people. He feels like Kass maybe understands something about Link that he himself hardly does, and Kass unfailingly respects it. 

Link is never uncomfortable in Kass's presence, as long as he isn't playing that song. Any of the others are just a call for Link to answer, a sound that means some kind of safety, be it a stable or just a person who happens to be in wild places where people rarely are, same as Link. It's a relief to hear that sound. 

That's why he's uncomfortable now, he thinks. Kass isn't playing. The times that Link has rested by him for a while, he's always been playing. Now he's silent, calm as still waters, staring out over the horizon. The concertina rests silent in his hands. 

Link waves hesitantly for Kass's attention. 

"Hm?"

Link points at the concertina, tilting his head in question. 

Kass smiles, much as the Rito ever do, and lifts it into a playing position. 

"What would you like to hear?"

Link considers it -- Kass hasn't ever asked before, and Link would never have made any kind of request. All of Kass's songs seem related to Link's destiny in some way, save for his usual improvisation that draws Link to him. Link appreciates them all, but doesn't know what to say. He doesn't want to think about his destiny right now. 

There's one, though. 

Horses, Link signs, unsure if Kass understands or not. He's too exhausted to try and communicate it further, and feels a bit like a child. 

"The song I play at the stables? That's a very old one," Kass says, "Though I'm sure I've told you that before. Its meaning hardly matters now. It's a good one, isn't it?"

Link nods, thinking of all the times earlier in his journey when the stables made him so nervous, and when some of those nerves melted away upon hearing that sound.

Without the bustling of a stable, the sounds of horses and travellers and motion, it's plaintive and almost sad -- the concertina sounds like a voice in parts, calling for someone. Link thinks of all the times he's answered that call. 

Kass plays without speaking or singing or acknowledging Link at all, eyes closed as his fingers move across the buttons. Link eventually closes his eyes too. 

When he opens them, the tops of the waves almost look like white horses' manes, running across the sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a week left! on the home stretch now. honestly hard to believe.


	25. ruins

Link wakes to a sky so white it could be snowy ground. It seems winter never truly comes in Akkala, but the days have grown so cold and the sky always so pale grey that everything looks like one of Pikango's canvases with only the penciled lines drawn in, colorless and still. The autumn tones of the trees become nothing under that sky. 

The tree Link has slept in is a broad old oak tree; maybe he's slept in it before, but it's hard to tell it from the rest. There was a bird's nest in it when he first climbed up here, empty for the season. Link had swept it to the ground and taken its place. 

The empty Citadel looms over everything. Link can't look away from it even for a second, or he starts seeing the ghosts of soldiers out of the corners of his eyes. 

It isn't a memory. He wasn't here a hundred years ago. He doesn't know how those people died. 

Link has been up in the Citadel before. He's climbed the tower, killed the Guardians. There's no memory here for him to recover, nothing here for him at all. Link was at Fort Hateno, not in Akkala. He may have known some of the soldiers who died here and he may not have. He doubts their names are all remembered. He certainly wouldn't remember them anyway, not from a name, not for anything.

Ruby grazes below in the opposite direction, still in Link's line of sight. Her braided mane dips when she tosses her head, but there is no true sunlight here to glint off it, not like usual. Even she seems grey. 

With no morning sun to burn off the lingering fog, the day doesn't seem to truly begin. Link eats breakfast in the tree, eyes still on the ruins of the Citadel. 

The night before last was a blood moon. Link's making his rounds hunting Guardians, aiming to finish upgrading his ancient armor and stock up on Robbie's arrows. Link doesn't usually come here, though. No one does as far as he knows, with the exception of Neil, who is the one who told him about the Citadel. Link couldn't have known otherwise. 

Robbie, though, is the one who suggested coming to the Citadel. 

"Skywatchers," Robbie said, facetiously getting straight to the point. "How proficient are you at taking them down? Not very, I'm assuming."

Link had just stared. 

"Bring me a rotor from one. Try the ruins around the tower," Robbie commanded. He'd then ignored Link and talked only to Cherry, and Link never learned what exactly Robbie plans to do with a Skywatcher rotor. 

The hard part, Link decides, will be taking it down with a rotor even intact to salvage. His usual tactic is to ground them with bomb arrows. By the time they hit the ground the rotors are in smithereens. If he aims for the eye the machine will self destruct. If he uses an ancient arrow, it'll do the same. 

Link watches them, ignoring the flickering of ghosts in the corners of his vision all around the Citadel, and he wonders. 

If only the cannons weren't so decayed. Link enjoys using the ones on Death Mountain, maybe a little too much sometimes. It'd be the same problem as bomb arrows even if they worked though: hit the rotors to ground the machine and they'll be too damaged to save, and hit the eye and it'll blow itself apart. 

Another day, maybe. There's definitely a solution -- probably several -- but Link needs time to come up with one. For now he's content to watch the Citadel and wonder if Neil ever did get to go pay his respects. Link also wonders if he should do the same. 

Looking at the Citadel it's hard to believe that such a thing could've ever been conquered by anything. Link can see Hylian soldiers at the cannons, archers at the walls. Knights like himself watching the world be overrun and unable to stop it. Unable even to defend this one stronghold, or to survive. 

It isn't surprising. It's almost painful how unsurprising it is that this place didn't survive. The non-Hylian races stood fast in their territories, though suffering immense losses anyway. Hylians, with their capitol centered right atop the source of the evil, had little chance. 

Even so, looking at the ruined Citadel is strange. The desolation of Castle Town is one thing, but this is entirely another if Link really thinks about it. Castle Town would've been overwhelmed immediately, its denizens having no chance from the start. Here, Link can picture soldiers grim and desperate, holding out for hours or days or even weeks. Maybe there were citizen refugees holed up here while Central Hyrule burned. 

If Link and Zelda had taken a different route, this could've been what Fort Hateno looks like now. But there's no use speculating. 

The oak tree creaks beneath Link's weight as he shifts to watch one of the Skywatchers make a turn. This tree is old. It could've been here when the Citadel fell. Soldiers and citizens might've run past it. Its trunk might've been stained with blood. There's no way of telling now. And it hardly matters in the end.

Link whistles for Ruby, and she trots over across the frosted grass to wait patiently at the base of the tree. The morning is still quiet and cold, the sky wide and white over the ruins. 

Another day, he decides. Another day he'll come back for the Skywatchers and clear the ruins again, maybe from atop the tower and making his way down. It'd be easier that way, more strategic. He could try and tackle the Skywatchers from above. And maybe it wouldn't feel like trekking through a haze of ghosts all the way up, surrounded by wailing souls that haven't found rest here, that won't until the Malice stays gone, same as in all the ruins of Hyrule. 

Ruby's saddle is icy and damp. It makes Link shiver. He pats her neck and looks at the Citadel one more time, its jagged edges sharp against the pale light. 

Another day. Today he'll leave it to the dead. 


	26. map

The map on the Sheikah Slate is complete. It's been complete. Link activated all the towers before even taking on his third Divine Beast. He'd nearly gotten them all before even completing the second, but he'd gotten swept up in seeking out Teba -- it seemed like there was no time to spare, or the warrior would already be facing Vah Medoh -- and then Teba had been blunt, and before Link knew it he was halfway through the Beast and finding towers wasn't at all a priority anymore. 

After that there was Revali's Gale, and then the rest of the towers were easier than ever to activate. 

Somehow though, even with the map completed, it isn't enough. There are shrines still to be found, and there are all the ruins that have names that don't show up on the map until Link passes through them, and bridges and mountains and sacred springs and fairy fountains and Koroks hiding, and in the face of all that, just having the map itself isn't enough. 

Link becomes obsessed with filling out the map. He spends hours sometimes when he should be sleeping, poring over the map, zooming in and out of it to view every inch in detail and mark the spots that he feels might have names so he can try and find them when he’s in the area. He doesn’t let it take over his quest -- the towers took enough time, he won’t allow this weird new obsession to take any more -- but it fills all of his time outside of it, and then some. 

Hunting for a shrine in the mountains turns into trekking up and down the slopes in search of a hollow or some ruins he’s missed. A trip to Faron in search of the rest of the rubber outfit ends in a detour that leads Link on winding path over a dozen bridges, trying to get the name of the last one he somehow missed. 

It consumes his thoughts entirely at times. Spending the night at the Duelling Peaks Stable, Link lies awake feverishly considering the first ruins he’d seen upon leaving the Plateau -- the Outpost, the Gatepost Town, the Kolomo Garrison, the East Post, all just brief labels for places that both do and don’t exist -- yes, they are ruins now, but a hundred years ago maybe there would’ve been people who asked _Where are you from_? And others who answered _Gatepost Town_ , same as anybody saying Hateno or Lurelin today, and now that place and all the others are gone and all that’s left are those empty ruins and that name, which means nothing anymore, at least to Link. 

It’s easy to assume Link will never know what the places looked like when there were people in them, when they bustled with life. He can look at ruined bedframes and rotted books and the odd gutted doll and know that there were real people there, that people lived out at least some parts of their lives -- maybe their whole lives and their parents before them -- in these empty places. But Link won’t ever know what that looked like. Nobody alive today really would. 

Names are all that’s left. Link is used to that. He can work with that. But only if he has the names, and therefore it makes sense to him to spend hours looking for a bridge he hasn’t visited or some kind of structure he can’t identify on the map. 

Sometimes even the Slate can’t give a name. There are ruins somewhere at the bottom of the Eldin mountains that Link never could identify, after going there twice and also asking around. No one knew. Link had to let that one go, and the others like it. 

But most places have names, and Link wants them. 

It’s not even just about that, though, Link’s odd new obsession; Hyrule is just massive and wild and unfamiliar, and going into it for the first time felt like drowning. Activating the Duelling Peaks tower and being able to see where he was going felt like surfacing again, taking a deep breath, being able to plan at least a little. 

Everyone in Hyrule has a map, as Link discovered when he’d first stumbled into Brigo and asked for directions -- Brigo’s map had been only of that region, a worn inked paper that outlined the roads and marked monster locations, mainly. Link remembers that off at the edges had been arrows: _To Hateno_ , it said neatly by one of the arrows in a little printed hand, the marker pointing off the page to the east. _Plateau_ , read the big empty area on one side. Brigo’s map was functional, at least for the purposes for which the man used it, but the one on the Slate turned out to be better. 

The Slate’s map, with its ability to hold all of Hyrule but allow Link to view it in parts and make markers, is invaluable. But it isn’t enough. 

In Gerudo Town, Link watches Captain Teake pore over a map of the known desert and the Highlands, marking out Lizalfos encampments with little carved stone weights and little glass markers. It’s a massive map, nearly the size of the table she has it spread onto, and it’s hatched and shaded in complex patterns, all lines of harsh black ink in varying thicknesses. As she tells Link about the movement of a group of monsters, she slides a handful of the little weights in a line across the paper. She leaves one of the little pieces of glass where the line started, and gestures between them. 

“--from here to here, in the past two days. That’s… Are you even listening?”

Link gives a sheepish nod, though he really wasn’t. The Lizalfos problem is important, but he really just wants to ask her about her map, the hatching and shading of it, the way she moves those little pieces like the games old people play on tables in the evenings. 

Her glare keeps him from asking, though, and he tries his best to focus back in on the actual topic. 

A few weeks later in Rito Village, Teba pulls out a map to show Link his opinion on the best hunting spots. His is folded paper, maybe waxed with some kind of coating. It looks less aged, but the ink is different than Teake’s, paler. The lines are drawn more loosely. There’s less detail. 

It's still a good map, as far as Link is concerned. He's fascinated by the little X's that must denote things he isn't privy to, the little symbols and pictures that must denote things that aren't written out. 

He doesn't ask Teba about it either though, mainly due to the look the Rito gives in response to Link's wide eyes, which is somewhere right in the middle between exasperation and incredible patience. 

Link stares at the Slate's map all the more after that, fixating on the clinical little printed names and the shading of the topography, the colors and shapes, the little symbols he can press to warp. He isn't sure why he's fascinated by it now after taking it for granted for so long. He thinks he ultimately likes Brigo and Teba and Teake's maps better, with their own niche usefulness, but Link doesn't know where he'd be without his own on the Slate. 

It's Kapson, actually, who offers to show Link a map, just for the sake of seeing it. 

"It's a pet project of sorts," Kapson rasps, digging the thing out of a drawer. "Zora maps are fairly out of date, at least for areas outside of the Domain… Customers of the inn, they've asked me for directions, and I haven't been able to truly give them. So I've started compiling others' maps into a large one of Akkala."

Link hadn't really given any thought to the Zora even making or having maps, though of course they would. He's seen Mipha's diary with its carefully waxed pages, bound into the coated leather with what appeared to be some kind of fishing wire. Link has touched it a dozen times now, reading it again, and he still hasn't considered the idea of the Zora keeping any kind of records or maps on paper or cloth. That's somewhat exciting in itself. 

"See, here…" Kapson moves a claw across the map, searching for something. Link watches patiently. 

"Ah, yes. Here, I've gotten all the way to the sea," the elder says, "And from there, well. We used to have maps of the seas, and I cannot speak to whether those would still be accurate, but perhaps one day."

Link jumps as Kapson grabs his hand, but lets the old Zora keep it as he rummages for something under the desk. 

"Aha! Here. I know that here there is a fairy fountain. But she will not come out for me. Have you, by any chance, met her?"

Link has indeed met Mija, and visits her almost every time he comes here. He had wondered if the Great Fairies greeted travellers again now, but supposed he has his answer. Kapson must see the recognition on his face. 

"Excellent," he says, pushing a pen into Link's hand. "If you'll write in her name there, under where I've written _Great Fairy's Fountain_. Names are important… It is important, to me, that her name be recorded."

Link goes still and turns red, saying nothing. Kapson just stares at him. 

"Well… Perhaps the Great Fairies do not give out their own names so lightly," he says with a sigh, reaching for the pen back. 

Link holds on to it, gripping it tight. They're both frozen for a moment. 

_Mija_ , Link thinks. He's sure he knows how to spell it, based on the way he pictures it in his head. He knows the sounds of all the letters, can work through them one by one to sound out a word -- it's how he relearned to read, in a way, and found out that way that he hadn't ever completely forgotten. He sounds out words all the time. Often on the Slate's map itself, working out the names of those forgotten ruins and tattered bridges and lonely mountaintops. 

He just hasn't written them. Hasn't written anything, really. 

It's not even that he hasn't needed to. It certainly would've been helpful on his journey, and it's still a nuisance every now and then, especially when it would ease communication with people. 

He must've known how to write before. He can read Hylian just fine by now, and even some Sheikah and Gerudo. He knows all the letters and what they look like. It should be muscle memory, then, like fighting is, and he should be able to just write _Mija_ on Kapson's map and be done with it, because names are important and it would make Mija happy, even if she's still hiding from people at the moment. 

Link holds the pen in a shaky grip, uncertain, not sure of which fingers go where -- it feels odd the way utensils did at first, as though Link hadn't ever used a fork as much as he did a sword, though he sincerely doubts that's true. 

But Kapson's map is beautifully drawn, full of careful, delicate, spidery lines and some of the best handwriting Link has ever seen, and he remembers how often he dropped a fork after relearning how to use one. 

He hands Kapson the pen back. 

_M-I-J-A_ , Link spells out with his hands, careful to be clear and to use the Zora variants of each sign as best as he can remember them. 

"You can't write," Kapson says. Not judgmental, but certainly surprised. Maybe the most emotion Link's ever seen from the old Zora. It doesn't feel good. 

Link stubbornly spells out the name again, and Kapson again ignores it. 

"I'm no teacher," Kapson says. "You'd best seek out Muzu for that."

Link is sure his horror and embarrassment are painted all over his face, but Kapson's schooled his expression into something neutral again already. 

"In addition to tutoring you can also show you the Royal Family's maps, I imagine, if you are interested. I sincerely doubt that he would refuse."

A little of Link's initial shame turns itself into curiosity, though he still feels horror at asking Muzu for anything, especially at the thought of first having to admit he can't remember such a simple thing. 

No, he tells himself. It's not that he can't remember. He just doesn't, not yet, and it's a thing he'll have to learn again, and that'll be in due time. On his own. No Muzu breathing down his neck and smacking him with a ruler. 

"And," Kapson says almost slyly, "Then, you can return and assist me with the finishing of this map. It was you sending me here that urged me to create it, after all. It's only fitting. Muzu would be the best -- the very best, perhaps in all Hyrule -- to show you the intricacies of cartography. 

"His teacher in the subject was also mine, though I had my religious studies to attend to. That man was a legend. Created the finest maps in the Zora library, and carved many into stone below the surface. It is one of his other students in stone-carving who created the statue of our late Princess, wouldn't you know. Muzu was thus well taught in the arts, among other things… Cartography itself has little to do with the ability to write, in the end."

Link considers it, curious. There's no time to waste on that now, of course. And he'd still rather not ask Muzu for anything, now or ever. But it's a thought. An appealing one, when he looks at all the careful lines on Kapson's map again. Link wants to see the old Zora ones. And he wants to learn to make those lines, and to understand what they mean. 

"Well," Kapson says after another long stretch of silence, leaning back. "For now, here."

Reaching back under the desk, the old Zora grumbles and rustles things around until he produces a scrap of paper. He takes up the pen and writes four characters in fluid strokes, and passes it over to Link, slapping the pen on top. 

Link stares at it until he understands what Kapson expects and picks up the pen himself. 

There's a boxy character first, then a sharp one with slashes through it. Then a strange swooping one, and then a triangle with a line under the bottom. Link can read them just fine. _Mija_. It's replicating them that, as expected, is harder than it looks. 

"No, no," Kapson says before Link even makes the first mark on the paper. "Brace it with that finger, see?"

A feeling creeps up Link's spine, the tingle of familiarity. The knowledge that he's been here before, maybe heard the exact same words and felt a hand on his own, but he won't actually remember it, not enough to know who the words or hand could've possibly belonged to. 

"Yes, like that," Kapson says approvingly when Link adjusts his fingers. 

It's easier then -- his brain still isn't remembering the motion and the strokes are clumsy, especially on the swooping third letter -- and Link manages the word just fine, though it looks pathetic beneath Kapson's graceful script. 

"Once more," the elder grumbles.

Three tries later, it's passable. Not beautiful, but perfectly readable, even that difficult one. 

"Good enough," Kapson says, and snatches the paper back. He then pushes the map at Link again. 

Link stares at it apprehensively, twirling the pen between his fingers. All that beautiful script, those delicate lines, the careful shading and hatching. The shape of the cliff coming down from the fairy fountain, the little perfect roofs of the houses in Tarrey Town. The little empty space under the words _Great Fairy's Fountain_. 

He's careful. He holds his left arm with his right hand to prevent the pen from shaking. He takes the strokes with agonizing slowness and tries to ignore the physical pain of them coming out too thick because of it. 

It's imperfect. Deeply so. Whatever Link's handwriting might've ever looked like in the past, he's sure whoever taught him then would be quite ashamed to see it this way now. 

But it's there. It says _Mija_ in dark, awkward little letters right under _Great Fairy's Fountain_ , and Link wrote it, and it's readable just fine, and there's barely even a smudge on the first character. The strange pride of that almost outweighs Link's anxiety over ruining the perfection of Kapson's map. He looks up at the old Zora expectantly. 

"It'll do," Kapson says, not unkindly. "Muzu can teach you the rest, and properly, and how to draw topography. Come back and help me then."

Link is still trembling slightly when he leaves. He checks the map on the Slate again, almost obsessively, then puts it away. Of course nothing's changed. By now Link has practically every label filled out, and only a shrine or two left to find. The purpose of that map is almost finished, aside from warping around Hyrule with it. 

Link considers Kapson's command again, and wonders whether maybe it would be worth facing his fear of Muzu, when everything's over of course. He wonders if Muzu would be willing to teach him. There might be Zelda too, depending on how everything goes. He doesn't know exactly where they'll stand with each other, just like he isn't sure of his relationship with Muzu anymore. 

But maybe it'll be worth finding out. And that will be enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another very literal and long winded go at the prompt lmao  
> (in my time zone, I have been getting these posted just in the nick of time but they keep showing up as the day after, which is annoying me slightly, but oh well)


	27. fairy

It's midnight, and Link is running. 

He hadn't meant to be in the Lynel's territory. He didn't realize. The Blood Moon came as Link was coming back from the labyrinth, and he was so tired, and the labyrinth wasn't finished, he was just coming back to hunt for a few hours, and then there was the Lynel, and then the Blademaster, and then Link was running. 

Even Bozai's snow boots hardly seem to help in this snow. Link isn't strictly trying to outrun the Lynel, though it would be nice. He's trying to kill it. He just needs to take out the Blademaster first, and the Keese before they freeze him, and then, and then --

Too late, and Link realizes that too late as the Keese brushes his back and his limbs all lock up. 

Then the blast from the windcleaver. 

Then the Lynel charges. 

*

Link left the labyrinth to hunt, because he was out of elixirs and practically out of food. It was careless. Scoldings from people he couldn't remember rang in his ears telling him how reckless he'd been lately. Stubborn, he stayed until a black lizalfo of all things caught him entirely by surprise and he had to face Mipha. 

Then, he left to hunt. 

That was a mistake. Everything has been recently, even coming here to begin with. 

Things have been going badly. Link is frustrated by Vah Naboris, failing miserably at the Trial of the Sword, and dreading returning to Eventide Island. He hasn't even completed all the Korok Trials yet. Completing one of the Labyrinths -- he's only done the one in the desert, and it was a nightmare, but he'd thought a second round would be easier -- felt like something manageable, something to be doing that wouldn't feel impossible. He was definitely wrong about that. 

The snow is too thick. Each step threatened to make Link fall, all the way back into the snowfield and through it. He'd been careless. Distracted. Too busy thinking about how miserable everything was, how this trip was a mistake, how he couldn't even take the thought of returning to the labyrinth. 

The Lynel, when it revived, did so nearly on top of Link. He'd lost track of time in the maze. It was all he could do just to run, try and get some distance. He'd kill it again, knew he had to, so he could return to the labyrinth. He circled it, barely able to run fast enough to avoid its attacks, half-stumbling and snow-blind. He hadn't seen the Blademaster there. There was no time. When time truly ran out, when the Keese froze Link in place and the Blademaster struck and the Lynel charged, Link felt truly careless, and then he felt nothing at all. 

*

Mipha doesn't come. Of course she wouldn't, having just used all her power a few hours before. No one comes, and Link's last few breaths rasp unheard into the burning darkness.

It's only an instant. Barely even that. There's cold and fire and nothing, and then there's fire and pain and a strange glow, not Mipha's. 

It doesn't feel like when Mipha heals him. Link had already forgotten, in the wake of her cool touch, what it feels like to be filled with soft warmth that rises and rises, and then to burn his way back to the living world. 

The fairy flits away into a shower of sparks and Link is left gasping for air. 

There's no time to consider it, or to consider anything. The Lynel turns back; the Blademaster lifts his sword. There's fire everywhere cutting crystal shadows across the snow. Link scrambles for the Slate, and that reflex is really what saves his life, as he disappears in his own shower of sparks, dipping into those precious seconds of cold nothing, watching the Blademaster bring the windcleaver down, just a millisecond too late. And then he's gone. 

*

The desert at night is nearly as cold as the snowfields. Sand seals or Lizalfos grunt and shuffle somewhere off in the darkness, beyond where Link can see. 

The fairy fountain always glows, and it casts its light all around the interior of the great skeleton. Beyond that is black as pitch. 

Link sits at at the edge of the shrine, arms around his knees. 

One fairy. One fairy, which he'd forgotten he even had. That's how close he had come to genuine death. 

It's been a while since that. 

Somewhere in the distance comes the shriek of a Lizalfo. Link can't make out the direction it originates from, and his eyes can't penetrate the blackness outside the skeleton. He shivers even in the warm Rito clothing. 

He's never been attacked at a fairy fountain. At least not yet. He hasn't lingered at any of them before, being too unnerved by the Great Fairies themselves. Tera remains undisturbed under the water, wherever she rests, and Link keeps his distance. He may call her a friend by now, but he doesn't want a friend tonight. He doesn't even know what he wants. 

*

The hiss of wind from a blade, the roar of the Lynel, the shifting flames. Link can't close his eyes without being there again, gasping in the snow. 

One fairy. That's how close. 

Three of them flutter around the fountain. Link watches them move, watches their pink glow flicker across the ground. It'd be wise to catch one -- all of them, if his clumsy feet will be silent enough to allow it -- before he leaves and becomes too reckless again. 

One of them drifts closer as if on an invisible breeze. Link follows it, thinking he'll have to pry his eyes open with his fingers if he sits here any longer, too tired to even properly berate himself. Too tired to feel anything but a vague sense of loss, a strange emptiness. And the grinding, burning ache that lingers somewhere in his chest and ribs that the fairy's healing couldn't quite reach, though Mipha's would have. 

A wolf howls somewhere off in the dark, and another one answers, or maybe Link only imagines them both, calling from one distant hilltop to another, saying something he won't ever be able to understand. 

He can't die. Not yet. Not with this many regrets, this many wrongs still begging to be made right. 

*

The fairies aren't hard to catch, even in the awkward Snowquill armor. Link's unsteady crouching gait doesn't scare them away, nor does the shifting of sand under his feet. They continue in their meandering paths until Link gets close enough to gather them into the Slate, and he thanks them silently for it. It's a minor blessing, the kind he usually wouldn't even notice, the kind that in moments like this means everything. 

He considers speaking to Tera. His throat feels closed and tight with equal parts exhaustion and gratitude. Staring down into the faintly rippling water, Link half expects her to burst out of it unprompted, but she doesn't. 

It must be near morning by now but the desert is still quiet and dark and cold, and Link just sits by the fountain for a while. It feels warmer there, in close proximity to the fairy magic with its illusive heat and unearthly glow. Though the damp snow long since soaked through his clothes Link doesn't feel it. 

One fairy, that's how close to -- 

It doesn't matter, he supposes. 

Now he has three, and anyway he sits there until the sun cuts open the horizon to cleave the darkness into sand and sky and Mipha's spirit returns to him.

Too close. 


	28. outfit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lackluster, boring/ poorly edited one, just had to get it done and had to be fine with it, too much going on today. tomorrow will be better & feel free to skip 👍   
> (I just know myself, & I'm not about to try and do two days worth tomorrow -- I refuse to get backed up with only 3 days left. may edit into something nicer later idk)

When Impa gives Link the Champion’s Tunic, it goes directly into the Slate. Link hardly looks at it. Instead, after leaving the Elder’s house, Link sells nearly everything he currently owns to be able to afford a new set of clothes, something he hadn't cared to do before, not understanding the difference. He revels in the sturdy boots, the light leather armor and thick cloth of the tunic, the hood that lets him hide his face. It’s easy to forgo the Champion’s Tunic once he has those. 

When he leaves Kakariko, early the next morning, heavy sheets of rain batter the roofs of the houses and turn the ground to pure mud. For the first time, Link’s feet stay dry through it. He gets soaked and the heaviness of the fabric becomes unpleasant, but the hood keeps rain out of his eyes. The boots offer purchase on slick ground. Link is overwhelmed by the change. 

In Hateno he finds another reason to be grateful. Nosy villagers peer from every doorstep and children chatter around his feet, but it’s still raining lightly so his hood is up, and his clothes aren’t torn, and no one can see his scars. 

It’s a disguise, he thinks, almost. In proper travelling clothes, Link passes as a traveller. Still a stranger, still an unknown, but a traveller nonetheless. The stares are different. At his approach, no one really backs away. At the Duelling Peaks Stable everyone  _ had _ backed away, when Link had first left the Plateau, and it's been much the same since -- always people staring at Link’s torn shirt and bleeding feet, at the scars that crawl up and over his shoulder from his chest, at his dirty hands and monster weapons, and they look at him like he's a monster too. Link understands it; he sees the difference between them and himself. They're largely clean, and wear more clothes with armor and layers. Link, at first, was twitching, overwhelmed, voiceless. Looking at his first real, living Hylians, Link thought he could never be one. When he came to Hateno before, he'd come in the dark and avoided everyone. It seemed better that way. 

On the way up to the Hateno Lab for the second time, he still more or less thinks so. A woman waves and calls a greeting and Link hesitates a moment too long, unsure, and then watches as she turns away. She throws a suspicious glance back at him over her shoulder and he winces.

At least in Kakariko the villagers are sly about their staring -- Link can feel the eyes but never meet them. Here, though, he supposes he’s truly no one. He deserves their suspicion, and this is a kind that's easier to handle than being looked at with confused fear, being seen as something maybe less than human. He feels human now, mostly. Enough, anyway, to pass as one in proper clothes. 

It's not that he doesn't think about the Champion's Tunic. The whole time he talks to Purah, when her eyes are on him, he just thinks about the two memories he's found and how he was wearing it in both of them, and that's all he can picture of himself  _ before.  _ Surely Purah must've seen him out of it, and she didn't mention it last time -- but now that he's thinking about it he doesn't miss the way her eyes flicker to his chest, distant, when she thinks he isn't looking. 

It's not that he doesn't think about it. He thinks about the tunic all the time. He just can't face it somehow, not knowing it was the uniform of someone he usually considers dead. 

He goes to Zora's Domain and frees Vah Ruta without it. He has Mipha's armor then, and the Sheikah clothes soon after, and from there there's really no point in wearing it at all. Not on a practical level at least. He tries to tell himself he's afraid of ruining it with how hard he is on clothes, ignoring the fact that he has yet to even remove it from the Slate.

It's after Vah Medoh that he finally does. 

There's no purpose to it. By then it doesn't even weigh so heavily on his mind. Link plans to try for the Master Sword soon now that he's found where it rests, and he's becoming used to recovering memories of that stranger in that tunic, and he hardly thinks about it. It's like having Mipha's trident or Revali's bow -- it's a thing to be respected, because care went into it once and surely it meant something, had its own importance -- but now it's just a relic of the dead that Link can't force himself to use. It's easier that way. 

But on a cold night in Hebra by a fire, it feels heavy in his hands. 

The Champion's Tunic is held together by a myriad of careful lines of stitching -- a patchwork made by countless slashes and tears. It's clearly been re-dyed and repaired and sewed back together at the seams to the point where it resembles Link's own chest that would lie beneath it, all scar tissue and wear and shaped by battle.

Despite knowing he likely died in it, based on the memories he's recovered and the fact that Impa had it at all, somehow Link didn't expect that. 

He turns it over and over in his hands in the flickering firelight, feeling over the seams and the embroidery. 

It's definitely more well made than practically anything he owns, with the exception of Mipha's armor. The fabric is thick and durable. The arm guards, the bracer with its battered surface, all of it feels alien and familiar at the same time. 

Link puts it away again, thinking, and doesn't take it back out for a while. 

He never really wears it, in the end. By the time he comes around to the notion, thinking of how durable it feels, how well-fitted it seems and how recognizable it is, it feels like it hardly matters. 

He puts it on in his own house one day, after freeing Vah Rudania, and it feels like a second skin. 

He puts it back in the Slate. 

By the end of everything, after all the Divine Beasts are free and the Sword is his, the tunic still feels like someone else's. Link half wishes he'd worn it the instant he got it and that he'd let it become some sort of uniform again, something to tell him what to be instead of reminding him of all that he isn't. 

He wonders if Zelda's feelings will be hurt seeing as she's the one who made it, or if she'd rather leave it in the past too. 

The morning Link plans to go to Hyrule Castle, he makes a detour. 

He leaves his house before the sun rises, taking the Champions' weapons down off the wall and scanning them into the Slate. Mipha, Daruk, Urbosa, Revali. The four weapons -- and Urbosa's shield -- will go with Link to the Castle, just in case. Link hopes he leaves with them too. 

The Champion's Tunic he takes back to Impa. He doesn't go in to see her. Instead Paya takes it, looking confused by the twine-wrapped bundle but wishing Link well, not knowing what she holds or where he's going. 

It feels lighter to leave that tunic behind. 

The Master Sword on Link's back doesn't feel nearly as heavy as that fabric did -- it accepted him again after all, even as he is now, for whoever he is, but the Champion's Tunic was made for a different self that Link thinks should, indeed, be left behind. 

He goes to the castle in Robbie's ancient armor and feels better for it. 

Whatever Impa does with it, Link doesn't care. So long as it can be left behind. 


	29. corruption

Maybe it's leftover sickness from the flight. All the dips and turns, the heart-wrenching drops to avoid being blown to bits. Barely hearing Teba's calls over the screaming wind and the deafening blasts. Having no time to think about falling or failing or anything besides aiming for the glowing eyes of the cannon sights, feeling time stretch and bend, drawing back the string of the falcon bow until it feels impossibly close to snapping, letting go to drop out of the sky again and let a laser pass inches from his head, just praying that the arrow aimed true. 

With all of that, Link had no time to think. Teba left injured. Link felt overwhelmed, half wishing he'd gone to Zora's Domain first after all, because surely then he wouldn't be so far up in the empty air -- he isn't afraid of heights, but something about the height and the motion and being so exposed makes his stomach turn. 

And surely the feeling just that. It's just vertigo and nerves. Maybe a little valid fear of the unknown. Nothing else. 

Revali speaks to him, and the tone makes Link shiver involuntarily. The way it echoes in the emptiness, but also echoes in Link's own head. The derision mixed with the otherworldliness. 

It's not like Link hasn't spoken with the dead before, he thinks, picturing the ghost of the king. It's that he didn't go in knowing the voice was dead. 

Ultimately, though, it isn't even Revali that has Link feeling so unnerved. It's something about Vah Medoh itself -- the cavernous space and the decay and the Malice. Poisonous patches of the stuff, foul-smelling slime that burns to touch. That oily burning smell. 

Link does the only thing he can think of to do when he shoots the Malice-eyes, and is relieved when some of the substance retracts. 

But the feeling isn't gone. 

The puzzles inside the Beast aren't hard. At best they're the same as in any shrine, just larger, closer. More real, with the wind screaming around Link's head as he tries to think, and Revali's contempt ringing inside it. 

At worst, they're confusing and nerve-wracking. Not the problems themselves -- the waiting, the thinking, the wandering around looking for solutions. Every second Link spends in the interior of Medoh feels both like a second he doesn't have to spare and one that isn't his to spend. 

All throughout, Link feels eyes on him, even when he's shot them all down. 

The feeling creeps up on him and won't recede. It has him glancing over his shoulder every few seconds, convinced that one time he'll turn and there will be someone there. Not the dead Rito Champion, not another ghost. Someone living and breathing and watching Link pass through the cavernous empty spaces and saying nothing. 

The air is frigid. Link can hardly feel his fingers even with the Rito clothes. It's distracting. The howl of the wind, the shifting of the deck under his feet. Everywhere there's sound and motion tearing through the emptiness. 

And it doesn't feel like emptiness. Link feels Revali there, sort of. His impatience and snide comments, the sense of being patronized even during the long stretches of silence. But Link feels something else besides the Rito. And he's unnervingly sure it can feel him too. 

There's no telling whether Link ever boarded Vah Medoh in the past. From the memory on Revali's Landing he would guess that he didn't, and that it's just the resemblance to all of the other Sheikah tech that makes it feel so oddly familiar. 

Familiar, but wrong. 

There's an innate wrongness to the silence, to the grinding of machinery echoing until the wind tears the sound away. There's a lifelessness to Vah Medoh that feels so distant from the bustling Rito Village, but there's that strange feeling that separates it from the tomblike quiet of shrines. 

There's something here. Link knows it, expects it. Something living, something waiting. Not Revali. 

That sense of wrongness leads Link all the way to the Main Control Unit, at the end of all the puzzles. He'd have gone to it even without Revali's direction. The thing feels like the center of that feeling of being watched, when somehow Link knows it should feel like Vah Medoh itself, like the spirit of the machine -- Link's sure Vah Medoh is alive in a way, maybe like he himself was for a hundred years, some life force in the gears and wires, some strange consciousness -- and the presence in the Main Control Unit isn't what it should be. It's wrong.

The Blight is hardly a surprise. Link feels something almost like relief wash over him when it emerges, regardless of what Revali says and regardless of the fact that this isn't exactly a fight Link's ready for. 

He's relieved anyway, because it means he was right, that that feeling didn't come from the Beast. It didn't come from Revali, and it didn't come from paranoia.

The Blight stretches out, clicking and grinding and filling the air with that Malice-stench, and Link feels more relaxed than he has the whole time he's been up here. 

This, he can deal with. This can be destroyed. Medoh can be cleansed. 

The thing doesn't die easily, but then again Link doesn't either, and he has more to lose. The fight lasts thirty minutes, and Link comes out of it windburnt and bruised and full of a tired satisfaction. 

The Control Unit beckons for the Slate, its mechanisms that familiar cool blue. The screaming wind works to blow away that oily coat of Malice that wanted to linger. Inside and out, Medoh seems brighter. More alive. 

That feeling is finally gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pft shortest one yet. But life happens. And it's Really Happening To Me this week.


	30. race

There’s something to be said for the hardiness of Gorons, and for their patience.

It’s in Goron City, both before and after the freeing of Vah Rudania, where Link finds the most steadfastly carefree attitudes in all Hyrule. The Gorons live as they always have. 

The mines overflow with monsters, Guardians fly over the mountainsides sending fiery beams across cracked stone, and Yunobo asks Link if he's had breakfast. 

Looking up Death Mountain where Rudania used to stalk and now doesn't, where Link knows black moblins still swarm and rage and remember their deaths with their own resurrections, Link says no. Yunobo wrings his hands. 

"That's not good, goro… It's nearly afternoon. You could join me, goro."

Link agrees. 

"The Boss says we're gonna reopen some of the old mines," Yunobo says around the crunch of rocks in his mouth, a while later. "Traders have been flooding in, goro. Well… a few. More than usual. They want gems, and we hardly have enough to go around!"

Link nods, patently ignoring his plate of gravel but pushing it around a bit to be polite. 

"Things are good, goro," Yunobo says. 

Link looks up at him. Really looks. Yunobo's eyes are closed while he chews, face smooth and content. Genuinely content, as far as looks can tell. 

That evening, Link heads up the mountain to hunt. Business brought him here, but he hardly ever leaves a place without wiping out monsters, and so he treks out of Goron City and up the trail in the burning night. 

Maybe it was here, around Death Mountain, that Link killed all those monsters in that memory. He knows it was. But it might as well be new terrain with his new life. It's a matter of piecing together which monsters revive where, and strategizing on how best to take them out, and which ones to prioritize--

"Wait up, goro!" 

Link turns to find Yunobo trotting after him, smiling. 

"Leaving already?" the Goron asks, and Link shrugs, unsure of how to answer. Yunobo must know what Link does up here, as he's done it a dozen times now on top of every other waypoint and settlement around Hyrule, and he isn't exactly stealthy about it. Particularly here where the air itself aids in the use of explosives. 

Yunobo stops, though, looking confused and almost disappointed.

"Well, I know you have a lot to do elsewhere, goro. But when you come back, I was gonna ask you to go to the hot springs with me -- I wasn't sure if it was all right for Hylians or I would've asked before, but the Boss says Hylians like it, goro."

Link genuinely doesn't know what to say. It's a slightly bizarre concept, going to the hot springs with Yunobo, just for the sake of it, when there are monsters to kill -- not elsewhere, but here, right outside Goron City. 

Link wants to express that, but stops himself. He doesn't want to hurt Yunobo's feelings either. Part of the bizarreness is just the idea that someone wants Link to do something with them and not for them, unless there's some hidden request here that Link won't find out until he gets dragged into fulfilling it. If so, he'd rather just be asked. 

Yunobo shuffles his feet under Link's blank stare. 

"Of course you don't have to, goro! I know there's a lot to do, I just…"

"Okay," Link says, surprising himself immensely. There's little point in trying to speak with his hands around the Gorons as it's a language lost to them, it seems, if they ever really knew it, but his voice coming so willingly -- unbidden, even -- still shocks Link into not elaborating at all. 

"So you…You want to, goro?" Yunobo says after an awkward few seconds, his whole face lighting up with hope, even in the semi-darkness. 

"Okay," Link says again, albeit much softer this time, just because he can. 

Yunobo positively beams. 

There's no one else around. Link is immensely grateful for it; comfortable as he is with the Gorons in general, it's even easier with just Yunobo. 

The Goron prattles away just as he did this morning, talking more about the plans to reopen the mines and even to start excavating new ones following some vein of ore that the Boss has a good feeling about. 

It's easy to sit and listen. Link isn't as restless as usual, even with the monsters still roaming the mountain above. The hot water is relaxing, but that isn't what eases Link's twitchy nature. 

"And I couldn't believe it when it happened, goro, but the Boss said when he was listening to that vein, goro, he heard where it went, and he said we'd move the city around the mountain and follow it!" Yunobo waves his hands wildly for emphasis, splashing them both.

"It's been ages since we moved! I couldn't believe it, goro… To think, in a couple hundred years, we could be around the mountain, goro!"

"Hundred?" Link croaks, alarmed. 

"Of course, goro! Moving the city, it's a slow thing, goro. That kind of stone work takes time."

Link stares up at the mountain, the fiery veins of lava that run down its sides. He wonders how long Gorons live. He hadn't considered them being like the Zora, being affected by time so slowly, seemingly unmoved by anything. 

There's a long moment of silence, which Yunobo doesn't seem to mind, splashing a little and humming a song Link's heard before down at the Southern Mines. Link wonders how old Yunobo himself is. It seems rude to ask, but Link does it anyway. 

"Me, goro?" Yunobo asks, surprised. "Around twenty. In Hylian years. I mean. We live as long as you do, goro, we just don't really count like that."

That answers Link's other question, he supposes. 

It also makes the thought stranger -- a hundred years from now the city could be moved, and Yunobo wouldn't be alive to see it, but it's still something the Goron is openly excited for. 

Link can't imagine. 

When he haltingly tells Yunobo that it's met with a laugh. 

"Everything takes time, goro. The Boss says Hylians live faster. It startled me, goro, when you came here in such a hurry with everything… I mean. I know you have important things to do, goro, but we don't work like that," Yunobo says, wringing his hands again, looking like he's afraid he's said something rude. Link cuts him off before he can apologize. 

"It's good… I think," he says, cursing the way the words don't come out. Yunobo stops looking quite so nervous and lets Link work through what he has to say. Link's grateful for it. 

"It's… I think…" he looks up at Death Mountain again where it looms over them, wincing as he pictures all the monsters there that still need killing. "I…"

He stops, and doesn't start again. Yunobo sees where he's looking, even in the dimness. 

"You were headed back up the mountain, goro?" Yunobo prods eventually, sounding more curious than anything. 

"Blood moon," Link manages. 

"Oh." Yunobo says, sounding surprised. "You mean, you've been coming back and clearing the trails, goro?"

Link shrugs. He doesn't always come back here for that. There isn't the time in the world to go everywhere after every blood moon, and to kill every revived monster. It's a thing that eats at him a little sometimes, but ultimately he knows it just means he needs to face the Calamity sooner, get there faster. 

"You don't have to do that, goro. I mean. We appreciate it, don't think we don't! But, goro, we're okay here. It lets us get to the new mining sites and all, but a few Lizalfos don't stop us, goro. Not in the long term. Goro." Yunobo awkwardly scratches at the rock next to him, then looks back up at Link upon not receiving a response. 

"Sorry," Link says, not knowing what else to say. 

"Don't apologize, goro!" Yunobo leans a few inches closer, face determined. "The Boss says that one of Daruk's favorite sayings was 'the best rock roasts took ten thousand years to cook,' goro. Or something like that. The Boss changes it up a little -- but you get what I mean, goro. I know you have a lot of important stuff to be doing, but sometimes things take time, goro, and… I think that's all right."

Link takes those words with him when he leaves Goron City the next day, after a rousing morning launching Yunobo at enemies from a multitude of different cannons. 

A hundred years from now, maybe Goron City will have moved to the other side of the mountain, and maybe there will still be monsters there or maybe there won't.

Either way, the Gorons seem determined to face it as they always have. Some kind of generational patience and positivity runs through their veins like lava down the seams of Death Mountain, always changing, but always taking its time. 


	31. free

Gerudo town, after the fall of Naboris, is aflame every night with celebration. The days are lazy, quiet and hungover, strung out like a cat would stretch under the warm sun. The dusk hours glisten with every decorative metal, every colorful shade of fine silk, every pitch of chiming laugh as the women pour out from doorways - draping their bodies with bells, moving like dancers, all lit up with joy - ready to celebrate all over again as they've done for five days. 

Their chief is generally absent. She sits in her chambers mostly, and tries halfheartedly to force a reluctant Buliara to join in the festivities. Sometimes she even goes, with a sharp eye and a stern promise to stay close to the palace.

Riju's guards are scant in comparison to the preceding months. The Yiga are scattered and leaderless, Naboris is calmed, Urbosa watches over them. And the Hero is here. 

Riju wonders exactly where he is and whether he sits, like her, and watches. If he were celebrating with her people, she would probably see his slight form out her windows that face down on the plaza. She spent some time looking on the first day, after she returned from her obligatory rounds. The congratulations heaped upon her were painful. She didn't free Urbosa. 

She doesn't hate the Hero, though. She feels a sort of emptiness toward him, if anything. She wonders about her people; Buliara seems to look at him with a grudging respect, even tempered by constant protective suspicion. Buliara hasn't quite recovered from the Hero being a  _ voe, _ and that deception being used to get so close to Riju. Riju doesn't mind, knowing there was probably no other way. If he'd snuck in somehow to approach her, Buliara would've killed him - or he would've killed her, maybe, which is a horrible thought. 

The palace guards may or may not know that the odd Hero isn't a  _ vai.  _ Riju has said nothing, and she knows Buliara would not either, not without Riju's permission. So it's between him and the people, she figures, as it probably should be. Their traditions are important, but so was calming Naboris. Riju doesn't know if she has the perspective to address that properly, or at all. She has no intention of making the Hero leave the city. Certainly not yet, or unless it is requested of her. 

And he is here; Buliara claims to have seen him briefly with Isha, yesterday morning, deep in what passes for conversation when he is involved. 

Riju herself has not seen him once since he returned from Naboris. He entered it injured, and she was unable to stick around and wait. When news broke from the outpost that Naboris had calmed, it was immediate chaos in the city as people rushed to the gates for a look - it was early morning, and the sun shone directly through where the dust storm had been. The sand had never seemed to glitter so much, so richly as it did that morning, when uncertainty slowly gave way to furious joy. Riju received word of the Hero's arrival a full day later by way of a tipsy palace guard, rushing to fulfil her duty to the chief and still in celebratory bells. They jingled as she knelt down, echoing the ringing in Riju's ears - where did he go? There was no word of him leaving the city, not that he wasn't fully capable of scaling the walls. 

But he's still here, according to Buliara, and Riju sits anxiously surrounded by pillows, alone in her chambers as she made it clear she wished to be. Music wafts up through the open windows, heady as the scent on the air, dense with perfume and cooking meat and spices - never in Riju's short life has she seen her people celebrate this way. 

They were well off before Naboris began rampaging, but grief for Riju's mother must have clouded things, not just for Riju but for the whole city. That's the only explanation she can muster for the solemnity before there was any reason to be solemn. Once Naboris cut off trade routes, sure. But before that?

Maybe it was just Riju grieving; maybe her memories don't extend far enough to when her mother was alive and strong and fearless. Maybe her people celebrated victories this way then, too, before they were burdened by a young inexperienced chief who grieved too deeply and understood too little, saw too little of their faces. Maybe it was not Buliara's protectiveness keeping her confined to the palace, but her own heavy heart. 

A knocking sound arrests this thought in its tracks, making Riju scramble for the scimitar always in her reach. But it's not a Yiga mask that has appeared in the window, but rather a familiar, though veiled, Hylian face. A  _ voe _ face, she is suddenly very aware of. 

"Where were you?" she accuses, then winces at her own tone, but doesn't apologize.

He ignores her and just clambers through the window with awkward grace, pulling off the veil and dropping to the floor with a hiss. He gestures vaguely at his left hip. 

She pads over. The scimitar is still in her grip, but he doesn't look alarmed. She probably does, though, on seeing what he gestured at. 

His whole hip - maybe his whole side, from what little she can see - looks bad. It's almost hard to understand, hard to make out what goes where, what part is what part. Certainly it doesn't look like  _ skin,  _ especially not pale Hylian skin. He just crouches patiently, letting her look. 

He's wearing those  _ vai _ clothes, looking rumpled but clean. The short top exposes an expanse of ruined flesh, charred and burnt. And healing, she realizes. A shiny coat of some elixir is plastered over the Hero's stomach and side, disappearing under the waist of the  _ sirwal.  _ There are lightning marks criss-crossing burnt flesh, looking almost carved in. There's some dried blood, but he's clearly cleaned and cared for the area. 

His hip itself looks off somehow, like maybe the bone was broken. That theory is supported by how little weight he places on that side and how he leans off it even when it means he's leaning toward Riju, letting his dirty hair dangle in front of her face. She wrinkles her nose at the smell. 

"You need a bath," she states. He just points at the injury. 

"You stink. You're going to stink up my rug." She rises, ignoring how he looks at her as though she'd grown a second head. She grabs him by the ear like one might a sulky child, pinching harder when he yelps and not relenting. She was careful to avoid the singed-looking one. 

After checking for Buliara, who shouldn't be back for an hour, and finding the guard outside the door to be asleep - she should wake her to spare her Buliara's wrath, but selfishly doesn't - she drags the Hylian to her personal bathing alcove, set behind a screen. 

Water here flows at the turn of a lever, diverted by gravity from the current circulating atop the walls. It's still warm from the day - any Gerudo knows that the best time to bathe, thusly, is evening - and as she fills the basin the Hero paws at her arm, pointing again at his waist. 

"I know, I know. It won't get wet." Riju wants to laugh, and would if she weren't holding in too much stress. Hylians do bathe by getting  _ in _ the water, as far as she knows. So do Gerudo, but only when there's plenty of time and a desire for relaxation. 

She sees him visibly relax a little, though looking confused, and almost feels bad for what she's about to do. But he does stink. So she grips his ragged ponytail while he still has his guard down, and dunks his head in the basin. 

He's like a cat, and his whipcord strength startles her, but a determination maybe equal to that of Urbosa herself takes over and she keeps her grip. She does laugh, this time, at the strangled noise he keeps making. 

She didn't exactly put his face under, but with him putting up a fight they're both soaked in seconds anyway, and when he finally breaks her hold she's met with a horrible glare made funny by the dripping. 

"I'm sorry," she cackles, and as she clutches her stomach he finally laughs with her, though he's clearly reluctant to repeat the experience when he dodges an attempt to grab him again. 

"I won't just dunk you this time, I promise. Just let your hair down and wash it  _ please _ . You smell like a sand seal shit." 

He narrows his eyes, signs something about water.  _ Don't like water _ is what Riju gets out of it.

"You're disgusting."

_ Don't like water _ , he signs again, urgent this time. 

"You don't have to get  _ in.  _ Just wash your hair at least. And probably your armpits."

To his credit, not once does the Hero look offended. He just looks suspicious. 

"Come  _ on _ ," Riju hisses. "Aren't you ancient? You're a hundred and twenty, or whatever. Act like it, and don't even try to tell me you've gone that whole time without bathing or I'll dunk you again. You  _ definitely _ didn't smell this bad before."

He does look mildly wounded at that, but more distant than anything, like he's thinking. 

_ Water _ , he signs hesitantly.  _ Hundred years.  _

"The hundred year sleep, it was in water?"

He nods. 

"Well, you still can't tell me you haven't bathed since you came out. It's been… a while."

Riju isn't sure how long it's been since the Hero woke up, but he's freed other Divine Beasts and seems to have travelled all over Hyrule. Even with the odd disappearing-and-reappearing travel he uses that device for, it has to have been months. It's been over a year since Naboris woke. 

_ Rain,  _ he answers, looking almost defiant.  _ Don't like being  _ in  _ water. _

"You visited the Zoras, didn't you?" She's baffled. "Did that not involve being  _ in  _ water, at any point? Can you swim?"

He sits back, still dripping but looking relaxed, and starts messing with the device on his hip. In seconds a pile of odd fabric materializes in his lap. It's some bundle of scales and sleek material, interrupted by metal plates. Clearly some type of armor. He makes a sign she doesn't recognize, then does it again slowly at her blank look. 

"It helps you swim," she guesses, accustomed to his odd armors from the horrible black suit he wore to face Naboris. He nods, looking pleased. He mouths a word about six times before she guesses it to be  _ waterfalls _ , helped by some furious upward gestures. This armor - clearly Zora-made - lets him climb waterfalls like she's heard the aquatic race does, then, and presumably it's a whole different experience than being  _ in  _ water, which is still confusing, but she can deal with that. 

"You're not getting out of washing your hair," Riju states in her most imperious tone. The one she reserves for when she doesn't want to sound like a child, though having a horrible suspicion it has an opposite effect. The Hero's poorly suppressed smile indicates the latter, unfortunately. 

She ignores it in favor of grabbing his ponytail again, grimacing at the feel. They don't say anything else to each other, but he doesn't fight Riju's furious scrubbing or the way she twists his neck to get a better angle. She should make him do it himself. It's not a task befitting a chief, that's for sure, but Riju ignores that for the moment. She's heard story after story of the time when, after a battle with some Yiga, her own mother cared for an injured warrior, insisting on carrying her across the sands to safety. That was Riju's mother. That was why she was a beloved and revered chief; she was fierce, she commanded respect, but she would do anything for her people. 

The Hero may not be one of Riju's people, and this may be quite different, but Riju hopes her mother would see it the same way. She thinks she would. 

Once clean and scrubbed half-dry with a towel, the Hero has hair the color of the sands. It was impossible to tell while hidden by the veil or unbearably filthy. Blood was in the discarded water. It took every ounce of Riju's experience with her own thick hair to detangle the awful matted mess at the back of his head. Aside from the occasional grimace, he said nothing the whole time and made no sound. 

Buliara should be back any minute, barging in and checking on Riju, trying to make her go out and face her people. If she found her alone with the Hero and washing his hair, of all things, even her newfound respect for him wouldn't save him, or Riju, or the poor hungover guard who had let it happen. The thought makes Riju smile. 

When she goes to the doorway to listen, the Hero takes over. She sees him out of corner of her eye adjusting his stance to take all weight off his injured hip, putting tentative fingers under the tap and eyeing it like a curious child. Mercifully he then gets down to business, bathing with slow, tired motions. Throwing water from his cupped hands into his own face, blinking blearily. 

There's no sign of Buliara yet, which probably means she'll arrive with even more pent-up worry and chagrin, incensed at her own lateness. The guard still sleeps. 

Riju finds herself far more relieved than concerned. She and the Hero rode against the raging Naboris; there is no danger here.

He's finished in record time, looking like a wet cat and every bit as disgruntled as one. Riju's reminded of the only cat she's seen, some present from a merchant trying to win favor with the chief by bringing an exotic pet for her child. Riju had immediately tried to bathe it like she would a sand seal pup. It hadn't gone well. The creature fled into the desert, probably got eaten by a Molduga or a Lizalfos or met some other horrible fate, and wasn't mentioned again. Neither was the merchant. 

The Hero, however, is still very much present and in Riju's bedroom. He'd best go before Buliara gets back and murders him. Riju tells him so, and gets only a blank look in response, reminding her that she doesn't even know why he came in the first place. 

"Where are you headed?" It's the only question she can think to ask. He clearly isn't going to join the celebrations any more than she is, judging by the fact he came in the window. The window in question currently lets in a beckoning odor of spiced meat on the evening wind, at which Riju clearly hears the Hero's stomach growl in jealousy, but he doesn't acknowledge it. 

Instead he gets up suddenly, limping in her direction and grabbing her arm before she can react. She never thought Hylians were  _ touchy _ , much less this one, but lets it slide when he starts signing one handed and fingerspelling half his words, supporting himself on her frame. She doesn't even feel his weight. 

_ Y-i-g-a,  _ he spells multiple times, which is condescending, but less so when she struggles to keep up after that.  _ New leader, new hideout. They came after Naboris. They are weaker without leader, they ran. I try to find hideout, no luck. Found a Blademaster and he wouldn't talk.  _

Riju misses his next few words, stuck on the idea of the little Hylian voe torturing someone. 

_ You're safe, city is safe, they won't come. They aren't strong now. They only want me dead more now before I go to the castle.  _

"Castle?"

_ Hyrule Castle.  _ He spells it out, not that Riju needs him to. She just hadn't really thought about it. She hasn't seen said castle for herself, but she knows enough. 

"Are you going now? Naboris… she was the last Divine Beast, wasn't she?" Riju hates hearing the suppressed panic in her own voice. It's not even her fight, and if it were, she should face it as her mother would've. No hesitation. The Hero, in that regard, is like her mother. There's no fear in his eyes as they drift to the open window he came through, ears twitching in reaction to the sounds from outside. The celebrations are still in full swing. Laughter and music and shouting ring around the city, but it's no longer at all pleasant on Riju's ears. A tightness grows in her chest; it seems that moments ago the Yiga were leaderless, Urbosa was freed and Naboris calmed, the sands belonged once again to the Gerudo, and everything that lies beyond the sand was the worry of others - all of this thanks to the same Hero who now brings news of the opposite, delivered alone in her chambers with not even Buliara as a buffer. 

Riju senses his eyes on her and ignores it. She focuses on the window, on the sounds of her people enjoying themselves. 

"Will they follow you away from the desert?" She has to force out the words, hating how they taste on her tongue. 

_ Probably _ , he signs. He shifts his weight and only then does she realize he still leans on her; his grip faded out with everything else on hearing of the Yiga. 

"Why didn't you say when you arrived? Or tell the guards?"

He pauses. 

_ Told Isha first. To warn the merchants she deals with. Yiga avoiding the city but not sure about bazaar or stable, Isha said speak to the guards and not worry you, that she speak to the traders. I search around for Yiga, in city and in desert, nothing.  _ He shakes his head.  _ So I come see you. I thought Isha maybe talked to guards?  _ His tired eyes are narrowed, darting from Riju's face to the door and back in sudden uncertainty.

"Maybe she did… Buliara should be back by now. But if she thought there was any danger, any at all, she'd be with me." Something in Riju's belly turns over, and the strong cooking-scent of the open window smells too much like burning, the incensed breeze is too close to a funeral pyre. 

The Hero makes a sound, tearing her attention away from the window. Maybe he's been trying to get her attention for a minute, hand fisted tightly in her sleeve, and only succeeded with making a noise. She doesn't feel bad. 

_ I wait with you? Or I find Buliara?  _

"Buliara," she says immediately, already reaching for the scimitar that rests by her bed. "She should be… I don't know, she didn't say, she doesn't drink… she should be easy to spot-" 

The Hero pats Riju's shoulder, maybe to shut her up. He's tying his veil back on over wet hair and tying an odd skirt around his waist where the  _ sirwal _ doesn't cover, of the kind Riju thinks maybe Urbosa would've worn. It hides the injury from sight, which Riju's glad for. He's done plenty for her and her people; even if it's him and him alone that the Yiga want, she can't help but feel she should deal with them as her mother probably would've. As Lady Urbosa would've. Instead, she hides in her bedroom while Buliara is missing and the Hero looks for her, probably just on Riju's whim anyway, since there's no reason to even suspect there are Yiga here or anything is amiss. 

Riju grinds her teeth. 

"Wait."

She catches his arm this time, gripping with a force that makes him wince. She doesn't let go. 

"I'm coming with you. Or going instead. I'm sure there is no concern besides maybe Buliara getting coerced into a drinking game."

The Hero just shrugs, pointing at the window. Riju glares at him, but follows, trying with some success to imitate his grip on the sill and the grace with which he pulls himself through, clambering up to the roof. She does hesitate at that, but grabs the hand he sticks in her face and lets herself be yanked up beside him. They both survey the walkways, ensuring no guards saw. For different reasons, but the same end. Riju doesn't want guards following her right now unless it's Buliara, whose constant presence has never been as annoying as she pretends it is. The people of the city won't question her too much, she hopes, being in the company of the odd little  _ vai _ who helped them out. 

From the roof they stare out over the city, Riju's eyes searching for Buliara's stature or the red of Yiga attire, even knowing their skill at disguise. From what Riju knows of Hylians their eyesight is similar to that of the Gerudo at best, which makes her confused as to what the Hero could be seeing as he glares down into the streets. 

"What?" she hisses, but he just shakes his head. 

The sky is fully dark now, though the city is well-lit and thriving more than ever, bustling with dozens of adorned bodies that reflect firelight at every turn. It's hard to see individuals amid the whirling maelstrom of celebration. A pang goes through Riju's heart all over again. Her people are overjoyed, and she is crouching high above them, suspicious and afraid, searching for danger that may not exist. 

She sneaks a glance at the Hero, trying to search his eyes for expression that could be hidden by the veil, but there is none. He combs the streets with a practiced eye, apparently finding nothing. A drop of water hits her arm, and she realizes he's still dripping wet. She is too. 

She feels ashamed now, ashamed and childish. He needn't be here looking for Buliara out of Riju's childish fear, and if he must be, then he certainly doesn't need to be hampered by her tagging along. He doesn't need her. If she weren't with him maybe he'd already be off through the streets and maybe Buliara would be on her way back right now, half-panicked, and Riju would be as embarrassed as she would be relieved, because she is, in the end, still a child. Buliara, her mother, her people, Chief Urbosa, all of them would feel so -

A hand appears in front of Riju's face, cutting off her train of thought and pointing down to the streets below. She follows it, but sees nothing. 

_ B,  _ the Hero signs.  _ Went there.  _

"I-" she starts, but cuts herself off this time. He should go without her, but he's wounded and she isn't. She should get the guard by the door and ask her to go investigate. It wouldn't be unreasonable, she tells herself. Buliara is due, and she isn't here. 

It feels like an eternity of hesitating, and before Riju even realizes it the Hero is a few feet away down the wall, looking patiently back at her with a hand outstretched. 

Riju gulps, glancing back down at the streets and then up at the Hero again. He just looks at her, not saying anything. 

A little flame of anger flickers in her chest - he doesn't look like he's judging her but he has to be, why wouldn't he when she's hesitating and displaying cowardice and she's nothing like Lady Urbosa - and she tries to force the anger down, grip it alongside the rising panic and turn it to a more useful energy. 

The sound of a flute drifts up from below with a trilling melody that breaks Riju's concentration, and the Hero's as he follows her gaze. 

"That was a song created in praise of Lady Urbosa," she finds herself saying. "When she became a Champion."

The Hero's face is impenetrable under the veil, but his eyes look a hundred years older as they fix on the direction of the flute. 

Riju goes with him. 

They half-run across the tops of the walls. It's only thanks to the general revelry that they aren't seen by any guards, at least on Riju's part, as she feels so unbearably clumsy that every slip or little splash of water echoes in her head until the inevitable next one. 

_ Get yourself together _ .  _ It's fine _ , she tells herself, repeating it until she finds her lips forming the words in silence. 

The Hero moves with confidence over the walls. He keeps stopping, glancing back, stretching out a hand to help Riju balance, and she hates it. She wants to hate him now - maybe she does hate him - and she isn't sure why. To console herself she visualizes dunking him under the water. That helps. 

It isn't long before they reach the Hero's destination, wherever that is. Riju finds herself staring across a gap, where the side street is narrow and free of revellers, and the Hero seems to be considering leaping across to the roofs on the other side. His eyes scan back and forth, measuring. 

"No," Riju says. 

The Hero just looks at her, startled. 

"I can't jump that distance. And you aren't leaving me behind either."

He seems to consider that, tilting his head and staring blankly across the gap for a minute. 

_ Under _ , he signs eventually. 

"Under what?" 

He points downward, at the roof they're perched on. 

"What? Here?" Riju says, narrowing her eyes. The Hero nods emphatically. 

_ Go there _ , he signs, pointing across the gap,  _ And see under. In here.  _

Riju doesn't miss the wince as he shifts his weight, looking like he's preparing to jump. He still eyes her expectantly. 

"Fine," she says, and hates herself for saying it. 

He makes the leap look easy, landing with catlike grace on the edge of the opposite building and hauling himself the rest of the way onto the roof. He gives Riju a thumbs up, but she sees him grimace and take all the weight off his injured side. Riju seethes, still unsure why she's angry. She watches the Hero as he watches whatever is below her. 

With the only thing to do being wait, Riju focuses on listening. The festival is still loud. Even away from the center of it, Riju can hear distant shouts and bells chiming, the steady beat of drums, that damned flute. 

Below her, when she leans close and focuses hard, she can hear voices. 

It doesn't sound like much of an argument. It's impossible to really tell despite the Gerudo penchant for open windows - the people inside down there are speaking quietly, and Riju can't make any words out. 

The Hero makes eye contact with Riju, but she can't make out his expression. She cocks her head in question. 

_ B not there, I think, _ he signs slowly, with wide motions. He looks down again, eyes sharp, ears twitching. Riju wonders if he can somehow hear what's being said. His face, or what's visible of it, gives nothing away. 

A minute later he leaps back to her side. He lands a little harder this time and immediately freezes, looking down with wide eyes. 

Riju flattens herself against the roof in panic. 

"What is it?" a voice calls from below, almost a growl. 

"Nothing," another answers from outside in the street after a long pause. Riju looks to the Hero, and he presses a finger to his lips over the veil. It feels like an eternity spent lying there, sweat beading on her brow despite the cool night air. The Hero's eyes look tight with pain. Both of them stay motionless in the silence. 

Eventually the Hero shifts into a crouch. He beckons Riju to follow and takes off across the roof practically on all fours, footsteps soundless. Riju does her best to imitate it. 

A few streets away he stops to sit on the edge of a roof, letting out a tense breath and curling in on himself slightly. Riju stops too, eyes flickering between his shuddering form and the lights of the city, suddenly wondering if the guard outside her door is awake yet, if maybe Buliara is already back - it's probably been at least half an hour now, someone could already be searching for Riju and she's probably the cause of worry herself -

"Hey," the Hero says, and the word comes out like a growl. Riju looks to him and sees his hand raised where he's been trying to get her attention. It's startling to hear him speak, even if it was more of a raspy wheeze than anything. It stops her thoughts in their tracks. Sure that he has her attention, the Hero signs again. 

_ They talk about Yiga _ .  _ They say… _ He hesitates, ears pulling back flat against his head, eyes shifting away from Riju. 

"What?"

_ They hunt Yiga,  _ he says.

"I didn't order that." Riju's head spins slightly. 

_ They go in small groups. Not soldiers.  _

"Why?"

The Hero shrugs. He pulls the veil aside to rub at his face, and his expression is pinched with worry and something Riju can't identify. 

_ Danger?  _ He eventually answers, not looking confident in it. His whole posture droops even more, one hand protectively hovering over his side.  _ They worry… About Yiga come here?  _

"Aren't they after you?"

_ They… can't know,  _ the Hero admits.  _ It… they don't know.  _

Riju tries to understand that, looking out over the city again. It sounds like vigilante groups, made of citizens, are going on Yiga-killing missions - but why? Aren't they safe here? 

Yes, the Thunder Helm was stolen on Riju's watch. She takes huge personal responsibility for that and it weighs on her every day - but no citizens were harmed even then. Yiga attacks on Gerudo travellers in the desert have become rare. It made no sense until learning their attention had been focused elsewhere, their ire shifted away from contest over the desert to hunting their target. 

She looks over at the Hero. Is he leading the Yiga to Gerudo Town by being here? Riju hadn't given that enough consideration, perhaps, but he's elsewhere in Hyrule much more often than he's in Gerudo Town, and nothing still has happened within the city walls yet. 

She wonders anyway if he's thinking the same thing, considering how miserable he looks. Her earlier anger has settled slightly. Enough to reach over and yank the Hero's ponytail almost hard enough to hurt. 

He makes a startled sound, somewhere between a yelp of pain and a laugh. 

"Is it my fault, or yours?" Riju asks out loud, feeling oddly disconnected. It's hers, really, she knows. If the Gerudo feel unsafe it's because of a lack of good leadership, a lack of control over the situation. There's proof in the fact that she didn't even know of the Yiga hunting. 

_ Mine,  _ the Hero answers, and it's both surprising and unsurprising at the same time. Riju just laughs, choked and a little manic. 

Buliara is probably looking for her. She should return to the palace, she should apologize, make plans to gain intelligence on the actions against the Yiga, she should… 

The Hero gets up, slowly, bracing against the raised edge of the roof. 

_ I find B?  _ he signs sloppily, tired eyes looking more at Riju's shoulder than her face. 

"No," she says. That anger, that weird ugliness, it flares up in her again. It's only for a second. Maybe it's enough to show on her face, as his crumples slightly, eyes closing for a second in what looks like some kind of attempt to regain resolve. 

"No," she repeats. Hesitates. The anger flutters, not quite going away. Maybe it isn't even toward him. Maybe it's at herself. 

With that in mind, even still unsure about it, Riju lets out a long breath. The Hero doesn't move. 

"I'll…" she stops. That flute song sounds again a few streets over, carrying on the wind. 

"What would Urbosa do?" she asks, surprising herself. 

The Hero doesn't answer. She doesn't look him in the face, just stares at the stillness of his hands in the dark. 

_ I'm sorry,  _ he signs after a little time.  _ I don't remember.  _

"Of course you don't."

She sees the veil move in the corner of her vision as his head dips, maybe ashamed. The anger simmers in her chest, threatening to boil over into panic, threatening to vaporize into guilt. 

"I'm sorry," she says, to try and quell the feeling. "I didn't mean that."

The Hero makes some small sound of acknowledgement that almost gets lost in the sound of drums picking up, a shriek from somebody across the city, sounding more joyous than afraid. 

"I feel… inadequate," Riju says partly to herself, as if testing the waters. "As chief of my people."

The Hero says nothing. 

"It's like… Like I don't…" she stops. Tries to figure out what it's like at all. 

"It's like I don't have what it takes. Not because of my age, even. Just that… that sometimes I feel like I know what my mother would do, and I just can't do it. And other times I don't know. And I rely on Buliara too much - look, she's gone a bit too long and I… it's like I get lost. I can't… I can't  _ function _ without her over my shoulder. I'm sure she's currently the one looking for  _ me,  _ worrying about  _ me,  _ and I'm here being… being a child.

"And the Yiga, I… maybe I put too much confidence in… in myself, or in… I don't know, I just. I don't know how worried about anything to be. I didn't know any of my people would… would see me as not doing anything about it. I mean, it's true. I can't blame them. I can't. It's my own failing. I rely on Buliara and I rely on you and I rely on the idea of my mother knowing what to do and then I don't do enough, it's never enough, and-"

She chokes to a halt, not having really realized what the stinging in her eyes meant until her throat closed up. Hot tears drip into her hand, stinging like the heat of Naboris' lightning arcing off the Thunder Helm, one of the only times in her life she's felt truly brave and truly enough, and even that seems false with the Hero here. 

"Riju," he says in that horrible raspy voice. She'd hate him for it if she weren't so occupied hating herself. 

"Riju," he croaks again, insistent, probably wanting her to look at his hands. She refuses, uninterested in anything he currently has to say. She shouldn't have said any of that to begin with, not to him, really not to anybody. 

"Sh-she's there," he says, struggling through the words. It takes a minute to sink in. 

"What?"

_ Saw her,  _ he signs,  _ there. _

Riju looks to where he points, down toward one of the city gates, where only a slight corner is in view. She looks back at him. 

_ Came in. Go toward middle.  _

"The city center?" she asks, still choking on a sob. 

He nods, shifting his gaze back down to her, face unreadable as ever. The anger turns to guilt and weighs like a stone in Riju's stomach. 

"Okay," she says after a minute. There's nothing else. "Okay." 

_ Follow?  _ He asks. 

"Yeah."

The way back across the walls isn't quite so harrowing. Instead of adrenaline and nerves, Riju feels only the weight of the guilt in her stomach and something like dread. Her limbs feel heavy and numb. There's nothing to say. 

They stop at the roof over Riju's room. 

"You aren't coming?" she asks, looking back to where the Hero hovers behind her. He shrugs, looking meaningfully downward and making a throat-slitting gesture. She grimaces. 

"I guess so," she says. There's a bout of silence again. "Thanks."

Upon not receiving an answer she turns, ready to figure out how to climb back down through the window or jump to the balcony without breaking both her legs. Busy thinking about that, she leaps almost a foot in the air when the Hero grabs her arm. 

"Din's tits," she snaps, "What?"

The Hero sits back awkwardly, letting go. Riju stares as he fusses with the fabric of the sirwal, twisting it in his fingers, not meeting her eyes. 

_ I go,  _ he finally signs, still looking straight down at weathered stone.  _ To the castle.  _

"Now?!"

_ Soon.  _ Even with the veil covering half his face, Riju imagines she can see bared teeth.  _ Then no Yiga?  _

A harsh gust of wind whips stray hairs into Riju's eyes. The Hero is unmoved, head still bowed as if waiting for a judgement. Maybe a command. Maybe even an execution. 

"I can't tell you what to do," she says, at a bit of a loss. "You're not exactly one of my people."

A roar of laughter comes up from the square, where Riju can see fire and movement in the corner of her vision, synced with the beating of the drums. 

_ Friend,  _ the Hero offers, making it look like a question. 

Riju stares at him, his slouching posture, the way he leans all the weight off the injured side. Half-dried hair making a curtain in front of his face. The uncertainty in the way he keeps one hand a little raised after signing, as though ready to wave it off, to say nevermind. To apologize. 

The Hero, a Hylian, a voe. A Champion. Comrade of Lady Urbosa. Ally to the Gerudo, tamer of Vah Naboris. 

A friend?

"How old are you?" she asks, blunt but curious. 

_ 117,  _ he answers, hands looping unsurely through the motions. 

Riju laughs. It begins as a startled chuckle that rises into a bit of a manic giggle, and she can't stop after she's started. The Hero finally looks up at her, confused, bags heavy under his eyes. 

"You're a child," she cackles. "A really old child."

The Hero's brow creases, unsure and maybe a little concerned. 

"A child! You have a complex. There's something wrong with you," Before the Hero's head dips again, Riju gasps in the air to continue, "Just like me. There's something wrong with us, isn't there, Hero? Something wrong with us both."

The Hero just shrugs, then shudders. 

_ L-I-N-K,  _ he signs. 

"What?"

_ My name. _

"Huh… I guess so, isn't it? Huh."

He laughs at that, tossing his head back. The sound is grating and breathy, but Riju's still not over yet own laughing fit and so it seems the funniest thing in all the world. 

"Hey," someone growls. 

Both of them shut up instantly, still containing giggles, and peer over the edge of the wall. 

Buliara stands below with hands on hips. She looks extremely unimpressed. Her hard face barely softens at the sight of Riju cackling, but it does, and Riju sees it. 

"Care to explain?"

The Hero - Link - surprises Riju by leaning out next to her to sign. 

_ Sorry,  _ he tells Buliara.  _ Look for you.  _

Buliara's eyes widen a fraction.

_ Riju safe,  _ he continues.  _ Very careful. _

Riju snorts. Maybe he's just incredibly confident that Buliara couldn't scale this wall to kill him. Riju thinks he shouldn't be so sure. 

Buliara grumbles something that Riju can't catch, but whatever it is makes Link wince. 

_ Sorry _ , he signs again. 

"Are you coming down from there or not?"

Riju and Link look at each other. Just the eye contact, Link's nervous face, it sends Riju cackling all over again. 

Buliara sighs. 

"The festivities are still going. You can catch the end of them. I imagine it's going to be another few hours at least."

Fire-dancers circle and twirl, their torches drawing burning shapes in the air. The scent of their smoke mingles with incense and food to make the air heady and warm. The sound of fingers on strings, the endless rhythm, the crash of dancers' bells, the voices calling back and forth like a bead on a string. 

Riju, in all her short life, has never seen her people celebrate this way. It's almost a shame to see it from the outside only. 

She looks at Link, who shrugs. Buliara taps her armored foot impatiently. 

"Okay," Riju says.

  
  


Half an hour later, Link and Riju and Buliara sit on the steps of the palace surrounded by drunken Gerudo. Riju has long lost count of how many happy shouts she's leaned away from, all drink-sweet breath and sweaty hands on her shoulder, brilliant smiles and words that get lost in the fog of everything. 

Buliara growls a bit at some of them until they make a hasty retreat, and Link scoots a few inches closer despite flinching under the same hearty greetings. But Riju doesn't mind, not really. Her people's spirits are high. 

A dancer twirls inches from Riju's face, and she finds herself leaning into the gust of wind, not away from it. A smoke-smell is left in its wake, and the thunder of the dancer's footsteps rings through Riju's skull. She closes her eyes to hear it better amid the drums. 

A noise comes from Link, and she opens her eyes to Buliara snatching away a drink that'd presumably just been plopped in his hands for the tenth time of the evening. Riju laughs at his expense. 

She sobers when Buliara turns sharp eyes to a passing Hylian  _ vai _ , watching until she is out of sight. 

"Buliara?"

"Hm?"

Riju glances at Link, finding a similar sharpness to his gaze that steadies when his eyes meet hers. She turns back to her guard. 

"I know about the… people hunting down the Yiga," she says carefully. 

Buliara just groans, rubbing her eyes. For whatever reason it makes the remnants of that anger curl in Riju's stomach. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demands though the words feel sour in her mouth. Buliara glances past Riju suspiciously, and Link meets her gaze with a startling amount of defiance. Riju sees it and tries to breathe through the anger as Buliara works out an answer. 

"I'd have told you," Buliara says, "Once I'd figured out what was going on."

"Where were you today?"

"At the outpost. I got wind of the whole business this morning through hearing some hungover talk. Talked to the Captain and she knew nothing of it. She offered to send a runner to the outpost to check in with the guards there, but I declined. Thought I'd go myself, try and get some things straight."

"Did you?"

"Hardly," Buliara growls. "They claimed not to know anything. At least one of them obviously did. Hoping at least she feels a bit  _ wary  _ going forward about involvement in that business."

"You threatened them?"

"A bit." 

Link snorts, just when Riju thought he'd lost interest in the whole conversation, entranced as he seems to be at the flash of gold and gems in the firelight. Riju takes a breath. 

"Can you tell me first, next time?"

Buliara looks surprised. 

"If you wish," she says, sounding careful. "May I ask why?"

Riju hesitates. She doesn't want to repeat her selfish spiel to Buliara. She especially doesn't want to cry again, be it from helplessness or just anger or anything else. This isn't the place, not with all the dancing and celebration and pure joy. 

_ She was worried.  _ Link sticks his hands in front of Riju's face to sign, and she shoves him. 

"Yes," Buliara says gravely. "Next time, I will inform you first. It was remiss of me to entrust your safety with… inattentive guards. I apologize."

Riju thinks of the guard she neglected to wake and cringes thinking of the scolding she must've received. It had to have been worse than Riju's own. Hopefully Buliara showed the guard the same unusual mercy, since she hadn't been too incensed at finding Riju on the roof. 

"It's not that. I was worried about  _ you.  _ And finding out that I wasn't… kept in the loop, it didn't help."

Buliara gives a slow nod, eyes wandering back to the square and squinting briefly to ward off another well-wisher, who changes her course in a heartbeat. 

"I want… to be more involved. In some ways. And maybe… maybe also a little less in others, for now," Riju says, feeling bold. 

"Hm?"

"Let's… let's talk about it later. Do you think right now the Yiga thing is a pressing concern?"

"No," Buliara says. "It'll wait."

"Good."

Link's stomach chooses that moment to give the most obnoxious rumble Riju thinks she has ever heard, audible even over the music. 

"How do you even survive? No baths, and letting your stomach do  _ that? _ "

"No baths?" Buliara asks, raising an eyebrow. 

"Anyway," Riju says, ignoring her. "Food."

_ No money,  _ Link signs, eyes crinkling as if it's a joke. 

"What? What do you even spend money on? You live like a heathen." 

Link shrinks away. 

_ Arrows?  _ he signs, looking embarrassed.  _ Lot of arrows.  _

"Arrows?  _ Arrows?  _ Please tell me that isn't why Danda keeps complaining about her stock and her suppliers. Please tell me that isn't entirely  _ you _ ."

_ No _ , he replies, looking offended,  _ Can't be.  _

Buliara interrupts them with a chuckle that rolls into a hearty laugh. Riju watches dumbstruck as her guard throws her head back, howling with laughter, slapping her leg. 

"Brats," she finally manages, "Both of you. Rotten little brats. Come on, let's find something to eat. I'm starving. And little chief, I know you haven't had dinner either. And  _ you _ , don't think you aren't getting that looked at by an actual healer."

Link flinches under Buliara's pointing finger. Riju grabs him by the armpit - silently thanking herself for making him deal with that horrible stink - and hauls him up, slinging his arm around her shoulders. He tries to lean his weight away from her but quickly gives up. 

The aroma of spiced food beckons from the stalls, and dodging the twirling dancers and staggering drunks becomes almost a game. Buliara wanders behind Link and Riju. The pair navigate through the commotion giggling and half-falling. 

Riju laughs hardest when Danda spies Link, gives him a look of murderous disbelief, then changes it to one of friendliness when he looks her way. 

  
  
  


As Buliara predicted, the festivities go on into the early morning. 

Long after all the children have fallen asleep and been tucked in by their mothers, after most of the early-drunks are napping on stairs and in doorways, Link and Riju nod off against a disgruntled Buliara, full stomachs lulling them both into tiredness. Riju lazily watches torchlight gleam off her guard's armor and reaches across to yank Link's veil back down over his face from where it's been scrunched up for half an hour. 

"Ah, let it be," Buliara rumbles. "Half the town knows anyway."

Link's eyes pop open in alarm, but Buliara just laughs. 

"This was nice," Riju mutters into gold armor, Buliara humming in agreement. 

"We should-" Riju yawns, interrupting herself, "We should find more reasons… to celebrate. Like this."

"Indeed."

"Thanks again for helping us," she says, aiming the words at Link even with her eyes closed and not expecting an answer. A whack on her arm makes her open them again to see him sign. 

_ Thanks for helping me.  _

"No problem," she says, because it wasn't. If Riju had been able to recover the Thunder Helm on her own she'd likely not have helped the Hylian to Naboris, and Lady Urbosa wouldn't be freed if Link had tried to reach the Beast alone, and these streets wouldn't be filled with food and dance and song and light fracturing off clinking jewelry to make warm stars on the city walls. 

"Sappy," Buliara says. 

And that's it. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. that's it for this month, which is a bit wild. it flew by, but it also feels like I've been doing this forever.  
> I partly started doing it bc I've done nanowrimo for years but I have deadlines on other projects all throughout november, so I figured this would be a chill way to kind of make up for it in October, with less work, which... I mean. nevermind on that I guess when looking at the word count LMAO. not sure how I managed that during what turned out to be one of the worst months of my life on a personal level but no complaints. 
> 
> so anyway it's been positively awful and I probably won't do it ever again, but it's also been FANTASTIC for improving my workflow & time management even with this as low priority. And thank you HEAPS to those of u who've followed these posts with me. especially routine commenting (you know who you are! I love you! I appreciate you! Let me do you a gift fic or something!)
> 
> (lastly, if I ever get around to it, I still have two chaptered works this length finished that just need severe editing, so I might start posting those sooner or later.)
> 
> thanks for being along for the ride!

**Author's Note:**

> please feed me comments for motivation or talk to me on tumblr @/breathofthe


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